President Trump’s threat to veto the next “omnibus” spending bill is putting real pressure on Congress, for the first time in years, to reform a legislative spending process that has become so completely dysfunctional, few believe it can be fixed anytime soon.
But Congress may have no choice now that Trump has put them on notice.
“I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again,” Trump warned Friday. “I’m not going to do it again.”
Lawmakers passed five temporary measures to fund the first six months of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. On Thursday, Congress cleared a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package, which will keep it funded through Sept. 30.
Republicans denounced the size and scope of the 2,232-page bill and the hasty passage, which came less than two days after the legislation was introduced. Few had time to read the bill, which busted budget caps by $300 billion over two years and was riddled with partisan riders. It took Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., two hours to print the text.
Trump signed the bill Friday after threatening to veto it, and said the boost for military spending was its only saving grace. But he first joined the angry chorus of critics and put lawmakers in both parties on notice.
“Nobody read it, it’s only hours old,” Trump said. “Some people don’t even know what was in it. $1.3 trillion, it’s the second largest ever. President Obama signed one that was actually larger, which I’m sure he wasn’t too happy with either.”
Trump’s warning means Congress may have to achieve “regular order” by passing 12 individual spending bills, or face a veto.
While many lawmakers are skeptical congressional spending can be reformed, a special committee convened to scrutinize the process of appropriating government funding began meeting this month.
Lawmakers added language to a February bipartisan budget deal that created the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform. It’s a temporary panel, comprised of 16 lawmakers evenly divided by party and chamber.
The committee is charged with providing “recommendations and legislative language that will significantly reform the budget and appropriations process.” The panel held its first meeting last week.
“All 16 people were there,” Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., a member of the panel, told the Washington Examiner. “And all 16 voiced a real passion to get something done.”
Congress has for decades relied on funding the government through a combination of temporary patches and last-minute, massive omnibus spending bills that combine most or all of the dozen appropriations bills into one measure along with a slew of partisan policy riders.
Lawmakers pledge yearly to return to passing the bills individually, which affords far better oversight and is more cost effective, but divisions within and between the parties have made the task impossible.
The House, for example, passed all 12 fiscal 2018 appropriations bills last year, but they stalled in the Senate, where minority Democrats hold the power to filibuster. They blocked the GOP-authored bills, citing lopsided funding in favor of defense over domestic spending.
The impasse led to the need to take up the five short-term funding patches, which provoked partisan spending showdowns and a brief, partial government closure in late January.
Incoming Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has served in the Senate for decades and was a member of the panel when all 12 spending bills were passed and signed separately into law.
He believes Congress can return to “regular order” this year.
“We are going to do this, to go to regular order,” Shelby told the Washington Examiner.
Shelby said a solution will require bipartisanship, which means each party will have to compromise by accepting spending or cuts they don’t like.
“We can do it,” Shelby said. “We are going to have to work together for the common goal, that is to fund the government and not lurch from crisis to crisis.”
Congress won’t have much time. The appropriations process for fiscal 2019 is already behind schedule thanks to the delayed passage of a final 2018 bill.
The joint committee on budget reform will meet when lawmakers return in two weeks. They will hold the first of five hearings on budget reform and will present a reform recommendations by Nov. 30.
Critics of the panel say it’s been tried before.
The 2011 Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was unable to agree on a plan to cut $1.5 trillion from the budget, leaving Congress mired in the same fights over spending that lead to temporary and omnibus spending bills.
Perdue said this time will be different for a big, costly reason.
“We are $21 trillion in debt,” Perdue said, which will soon make it impossible for lawmakers to pass a budget, which requires fiscal planning a decade into the future.
“Because the debt is so big, we are so far down the rat hole it’s hard to do that,” Perdue said.
