Oh, goody. Just what we needed — a chance to cede control over spending decisions fully to Democrats rather than wait for a little bit of Republican leverage. The omnibus bill to finish out the FY2023 budget dropped overnight, and likely landed with a massive thud in the House.

Republicans got a couple of wins out of the new plan, but one has to wonder whether they may have won more with House control:

Congressional leaders released a bipartisan government funding bill early Tuesday that includes a rewrite of federal election laws aimed at preventing another Jan. 6-style attack and choking off avenues for future candidates to steal elections.

They expect to pass the bill, which is a product of lengthy negotiations between the two parties, in the coming days to avoid a government shutdown slated to begin this weekend. …

The massive $1.7 trillion spending package funds federal agencies through next fall. It includes $44.9 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine as the country fights to hold off Russia in the ongoing war. It also would provide $40.6 billion in disaster relief and would bar the use of TikTok on government devices for national security reasons.

The Senate is expected to vote first and send the legislation to the House. It could be the last major bill that passes this year before Republicans seize control of the House on Jan. 3.

“Seize”? Oh those Republicans — always seizing and pouncing! Republicans won’t “seize control,” NBC News — voters granted them control of the House. Although not by much, and thus far their leadership fight makes one wonder whether they will assume control or just seize up over the next two years.

Clearly, that has something to do with Mitch McConnell’s decision to bypass the opportunity to use a new Republican majority to leverage a better deal. McConnell already sees Kevin McCarthy pushing back against this budget plan as a means to demonstrate his testicular fortitude to hardliners in his caucus, and that risks a government shutdown that will damage the GOP — briefly, anyway. Ted Cruz pulled a shutdown stunt in October 2013 that wildly backfired and allowed the media to run narratives about extremism in the GOP. Almost exactly a year later, Republicans flipped eight Senate seats and took control of the upper chamber. The risk of political damage in government shutdowns is real, but it is decidedly not spectacular or long-lived.

McConnell did get a couple of concessions out of Democrats in this negotiation. Chuck Schumer had to abandon the idea of “parity” between discretionary non-defense and defense spending, although that may be mostly related to the $45 billion going to Ukraine. It also includes the long-awaited bipartisan adjustments to the Electoral Count Act that will emphasize the federalist position that Congress only plays a procedural role in the Electoral College, and vice presidents only a ceremonial role in counting its ballots. That is all the authority both had under the current ECA, but this will make it more explicit.

One question about that, though: if this new bipartisan update is this popular, why not pass it earlier rather than as an attachment to the budget? I’m not being snarky, either. It reportedly has broad bipartisan support in both chambers. Why did it take this long to pass it? Did Democrats want to hold off on it until after the January 6 committee sung its last stanza?

Back to budgetary matters, where this omnibus maintains the bloated-cheeseburger status of the federal budget. It keeps federal outlays at current levels-plus, vastly overspending current income and driving the national debt up even further. It also enshrines into the budget the spending priorities of two men who won’t be in office for much of its reach — Senate Appropriations chair Pat Leahy and ranking member Richard Shelby. It’s a budget tribute to oblivion, and for some reason Senate Republicans find this preferable to a situation in which House Republicans at least get entrée to call some of these Appropriations shots and have to stick around for accountability during the entire budget period.

Will it pass? Almost certainly. Nancy Pelosi only needs a majority, and she still has that in her present caucus. She’ll likely get a few Republicans drifting across the aisle for this punt, too — maybe more than a few. With McConnell’s backing, it should also easily pass the Senate. And maybe McCarthy will breathe a sigh of relief too, knowing that he’s safe enough to posture for the hardliners because he can’t really do a damned thing to stop the bill before January 3. That will give him enough breathing room for the next budget fight in the spring, well after the upcoming Speaker vote. At that point, McCarthy will have to start negotiating rather than posturing, but he’ll be on somewhat firmer ground in doing so.

For the rest of us, it’s the same-old same-old of Washington spending so much that they embarrass drunken sailors. Will we ever see a party dedicated to fiscal discipline again? Only when voters decide to make it their priority over owning the libs/cons and feeding at the trough themselves. Alas.