“Although speed and efficiency may be the excuse for these bundled spending bills, in effect they allow for, in the words of Clay Jenkinson, “a good deal of legislative mischief that would not stand up under a more deliberative process.”“Although speed and efficiency may be the excuse for these bundled spending bills, in effect they allow for, in the words of Clay Jenkinson, “a good deal of legislative mischief that would not stand up under a more deliberative process.”“
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/showdown-in-the-u-s-house-what-really-happened/
On Tuesday, Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted as Speaker of the House. This came days after the former Speaker struck a forty-five-day spending deal with House Democrats to keep the government funded. The last-minute deal and successful motion to vacate are the latest acts in a weeks-long showdown between the former Speaker and Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
The origin of this Gaetz-McCarthy showdown is a concession McCarthy and his allies made back in January to shore up the votes McCarthy needed to become House Speaker. According to CNN, the bloc agreed to “move 12 appropriations bills individually.” This was a major concession.
Traditionally, Congress would consider discretionary federal spending items on an issue-by-issue basis and then “appropriate” the funds for them. Under this system, the number of appropriations bills passed has to be equal to the number of subcommittees within the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. For more than a decade, that number has stood at twelve. Because of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, the deadline for enacting these spending bills is always October 1. That means that, by law, Congress must pass twelve spending bills by October 1st to fund the government.
But Congress rarely meets the deadline. Because of this, congressional leaders have fallen back on two special types of spending bills—omnibus bills and continuing resolutions (CRs). Omnibus bills combine all twelve spending bills into one big package so that they’re all voted on at once. It’s a process that is supposed to be faster and more straightforward.
But even after eliminating most of the appropriations work, Congress has rarely approved the federal budget before the October 1 deadline. CRs are spending bills that also condense all federal spending into a single vote. They temporarily renew the last fiscal year’s funding. The appropriations committees use CRs to buy time to put together an omnibus bill.
Although speed and efficiency may be the excuse for these bundled spending bills, in effect they allow for, in the words of Clay Jenkinson, “a good deal of legislative mischief that would not stand up under a more deliberative process.”
Appropriations committee members can work with party leaders and lobbyists to shovel their ever-growing legislative agendas into these massive bills, throw in handouts to their friends and donors, and send the thousand-page bills off to Congress just hours before the vote.
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