Congress has finally wheeled out a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, which will basically keep the government from shutting down until next fall’s election. The bill is something of a mixed bag.
First, the good news: It renews the year-old provision that prevents a taxpayer bailout of insurers under Obamacare. This was arguably the most important thing for Republicans to insist on in this bill. It is not only politically wise, but it also helps set the stage to repeal Obamacare and replace it in 2017.
Democrats traded this for a delay in Obamacare’s punitive tax on the kinds of high-cost healthcare plans that unions tend to negotiate for their members. This concession by Republicans doesn’t help repeal Obamacare, but it also won’t matter much if a Republican president is elected next year and Obamacare is repealed through reconciliation.
It is also heartening to see that this deal includes a repeal of the ban on oil exports from the U.S. Even if such exports will not be profitable immediately at this particular moment, it does not justify the retention of an old, dumb law whose only remaining defenders are special interests.
The lifting of the ban will have multiple benefits. For one thing, it will improve the U.S. trade balance — in 2012, net oil imports accounted for more than half of the U.S. trade deficit. A freer market for domestic oil will also set the stage for an eventual renaissance in domestic oil production and related jobs, whenever oil prices return to higher levels. It may also have a positive effect on national security by giving other countries an American alternative for their energy.
The sops traded in exchange for this out of necessity — basically, some renewable energy and environmental slush funds, and a special interest tax break for independent refiners — are probably worth the cost.
The bad news about this omnibus is mostly about what is not contained in the bill. Planned Parenthood will continue to feast at the taxpayer’s expense. A number of the Obama administration’s executive initiatives are not curtailed through withholding of funds, either.
Mitigating this somewhat is the fact that many of these initiatives are not going forward for now anyway. Some, such as the Waters of the United States rule and the executive immigration amnesty, have been halted by the courts, at least for the moment. This is not true, however, of the Clean Power Plan, although it is under litigation.
It is somewhat disappointing that this omnibus bill will not help restore certainty on these matters by cutting off Obama’s freelance efforts at policy and rulemaking. But in divided government, one enters the process expecting to make tradeoffs that one will not like. The tradeoffs in this bill are undesirable, but Republicans have done much worse in the recent past without getting nearly as much in return.
Another important thing about this bill is that it will hopefully give the new Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., time to get his chamber in order to pass all of the various agency spending bills ahead of next year’s appropriations process. Congress has been passing more and more omnibus bills in recent years, to the point that the regular process has become the exception rather than the rule. This matters, because it means repeated showdowns over government-wide shutdowns, inevitably resulting in grand bargains that rarely shake out in favor of conservative principles.
The bottom line is that there are many things conservatives want to do that will have to wait for a president who wants to sign them into law. Republican failure in election 2012 continues to have consequences, and that’s something to remember when preparing for 2016.
