Susan Ferrechio reports for the Washington Examiner on a potential change in the way Washington does business.
The “omnibus” spending measure in Congress may be heading for extinction. Or at least a temporary hiatus.
For more than a decade, lawmakers have relied mostly on passing these large and consolidated spending measures to fund government agencies from one fiscal year to the next.
Omnibus bills sideline the regular legislative and committee process. It happens when the House and Senate can’t agree on 12 spending bills that make up all of the funding for the federal government.
The House and Senate must pass another omnibus measure by Dec. 11 to avert a government shutdown. It comes after the House managed to pass only half of the one dozen appropriations measures. The Senate passed just one of those bills.
“These omnibus bills always seem to emerge late at night, before a weekend and are enacted within a couple days,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense. “This allows gimmicks and trickery to evade scrutiny and public vetting. In short, omnibus bills represent a terrible way to run the legislative railroad.”
But next year, Congress may be able to avert an omnibus spending measure, thanks to new House leadership and a spending deal cut by former Speaker John Boehner before he retired.
It will be a first in many years.
The last time Congress passed each appropriations measure was 2002, according to the Congressional Research Service. Lawmakers haven’t cleared all appropriations measures by the annual Sept. 30 deadline since 1995.