The passing by Congress of an omnibus spending measure with trillions of dollars’ worth of expenditures has become a tradition at the end of the year. The annual custom of large spending passed in a matter of hours emphasizes the backroom dealing that many Americans despise in Washington. As odd as it may sound, Republicans can use Democrats’ 2021 spending binge as a guide to steer clear of similarly irresponsible actions in the future.
Donald Trump campaigned against huge spending bills while serving as president, yet he nonetheless signed them. After withdrawing his threat to veto the omnibus spending measure for that year in March 2018, he pledged, “I would never sign another bill like this again.” But in December 2020, Mr. Trump signed a second omnibus bill that was more than 5,400 pages long and included over $1 trillion in new expenditure on Covid and other items.
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There are many things in this bill that we shouldn’t have had, but we were, in a sense, obliged to have them if we want to strengthen our military—we were forced to have them, according to Mr. Trump’s 2018 words. Only if Republicans agree to fund their favorite domestic programs will Democrats agree to reasonable levels of defense spending. Thousands of earmarks, pork-barrel projects, and numerous unrelated bills added to this “everyone gets a pony” spending-spree mentality will result in an omnibus measure that Congress will adopt without anyone having read it.
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is a plan for doing this and aims to head off the yearly omnibus calamity at the pass. About $1.9 trillion in other government expenditures and Covid relief were included in the act. Since appropriations bills are subject to a filibuster, the Senate must pass them with 60 votes in order to enact them. By using the budget-reconciliation procedure, Democrats were able to avoid that requirement and approve the bill in the Senate with a simple majority.
The distinction between programs funded by discretionary appropriations, which Congress must annually renew, and those supported by obligatory expenditure programs, which essentially run on autopilot, was also blurred by the 2021 reconciliation bill. Previous budget-reconciliation legislation only affected required programs, such as Medicare payment rates to doctors or Medicaid or food stamp eligibility, to change government expenditure. However, the 2021 reconciliation bill also established a number of new pools of government funding for organizations, ranging from around $21.6 billion for rental assistance to nearly $123 billion for public K–12 schools.
Historically, rather than using reconciliation, Congress paid for this agency’s expenses through annual appropriations bills. Each party effectively has a veto over the legislation because the 60-vote barrier exists. With the taxpayers footing the tab, this dynamic encourages cooperation between Republican and Democratic appropriators to raise spending.
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However, a future Republican Congress can do the same for defense spending because the Senate parliamentarian let Democrats to establish new slush funds for domestic expenditure with a simple majority through budget reconciliation in 2021. Democrats would no longer be able to demand additional funding for their preferred domestic initiatives if a separate package to fund national defense were to be passed.
In 2024, a Republican might win the presidency on the strength of majorities for the party in the House and the Senate. If that occurs, Republicans ought to use a unified government to reconcile a budget to fund requirements for national security. That would enable lawmakers to offer not only significant cash but also a steady flow of government funds over a longer 10-year period, which is essential to maintaining the military’s industrial base. By using reconciliation, Democrats would no longer be able to use the national security as a bargaining chip in their pursuit of unrelated spending and climate change legislation.
In the last case, the future Republican president would have every justification for vetoing yet another massive end-of-year omnibus bill. To put an end to the annual omnibus chaos, candidates for president should promise to handle defense demands through budget reconciliation.
