Never has Washington contemplated such a monstrosity. If a satirist set out to describe a once-admirable institution in decline, its members cheerfully passing off their laziness, secrecy, cowardliness and graft as “success,” it’d be hard to compete with this week’s Senate show. The omnibus is everything that is broken in D.C., dumped in one steaming pile.
Congress has this omnibus only because Democrats wasted the year chasing Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, while Republicans helped waste more with semiconductor payouts and other unnecessary legislation. The Senate couldn’t rouse itself to pass a single one of its 12 annual spending bills. Pretty much the only deadline Congress hit this year was the cutoff for submitting thousands of earmark requests for home-state pork. Priorities, priorities. …
The real scandal of the holdouts to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker is that they are stomping on an important message. A far bigger and more serious group of House conservatives are appalled by the practices that lead to omnibuses, and want changes to require the House to return to “regular order.” Committees. Votes. Amendments. Debates. This would return a focus on fiscal discipline, with members again subject to transparency and accountability.
But Reps. Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz are more interested in grandstanding than actual victory.
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