ScreamingEagle
Gold Member
- Jul 5, 2004
- 13,399
- 1,706
- 245
Congress is coming to a close with lawmakers rushing to complete duties that should have been done months ago. The symbol of Congress' annual failure at its assigned task is called an omnibus spending bill.
Congressional rules call for the House to enact 12 spending bills that conform to a budget resolution passed earlier and send them to the Senate for that body's approval. The bills fund the government's operations, from fighting wars to cancer research, for the next fiscal year, and they are supposed to be on the president's desk for his signature before the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year.
This year, there are no spending bills because not one of the 12 has passed. And, for that matter, there is no budget resolution. The result is that come December, with time running out, the Congress packs all its unfinished work and much else, including thousands of earmarks, into a single massive spending bill, much of which has escaped the normal legislative oversight.
And it happens with annual regularity. To take three examples:
― Last year, Congress rolled six major spending bills ― totaling $1.1 trillion and containing 5,500 earmarks ― into one package and passed it as it was going out the door for Christmas recess, two and a half months after the start of the 2010 fiscal year.
― It was worse for fiscal 2009. Congress didn't get around to passing the $410 billion measure, with 9,000 earmarks, until March of 2009, when the fiscal year was almost half over.
Shame on Congress? habitually late spending bills
Congressional rules call for the House to enact 12 spending bills that conform to a budget resolution passed earlier and send them to the Senate for that body's approval. The bills fund the government's operations, from fighting wars to cancer research, for the next fiscal year, and they are supposed to be on the president's desk for his signature before the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year.
This year, there are no spending bills because not one of the 12 has passed. And, for that matter, there is no budget resolution. The result is that come December, with time running out, the Congress packs all its unfinished work and much else, including thousands of earmarks, into a single massive spending bill, much of which has escaped the normal legislative oversight.
And it happens with annual regularity. To take three examples:
― Last year, Congress rolled six major spending bills ― totaling $1.1 trillion and containing 5,500 earmarks ― into one package and passed it as it was going out the door for Christmas recess, two and a half months after the start of the 2010 fiscal year.
― It was worse for fiscal 2009. Congress didn't get around to passing the $410 billion measure, with 9,000 earmarks, until March of 2009, when the fiscal year was almost half over.
Shame on Congress? habitually late spending bills
