‘Go Ugly Early’ omnibus strategy makes sausage-making look good

House Republicans are reportedly considering bundling all 12 regular appropriations bills into an omnibus measure and passing it prior to the August recess (The Hill, May 31, 2017).  Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s financial services subcommittee, is championing the “go ugly early” strategy as a way to avoid a fiscal train wreck in October. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), and the Republican leadership, have not yet weighed-in.

Based on past experiences with late omnibus money bills, accelerating the process will only exacerbate the harm done because it forfeits up front any remaining control Congress may claim over its constitutionally endowed power of the purse. Granted, making laws has always been an ugly, sausage-making process. But, churning-out sausages, one at a time, is at least visually and intellectually comprehensible.  Putting the whole hog on a rapidly spinning skewer, engulfed in a cloud of smoke, has a way of causing the public audience to tear-up and choke in anger and distrust.    

{mosads}Many House Members are too young to remember President Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union Address in 1988 when he slammed down on the rostrum three giant stacks of budget-related measures weighing 43 pounds.  He had been sent an omnibus appropriations bill, a reconciliation bill and its conference report.  “Congress shouldn’t send another one,” Reagan angrily warned.  “No, and if you do, I will not sign it.”  Both parties erupted in a standing ovation.  It was the second time in two years that Congress had rolled all (then 13) appropriations bills into a single omnibus bill.  Reagan’s show-and-tell prop drop embarrassed Congress straight, at least for six of the next seven years.

Ten years later it was payback time.  Republicans were in charge of both chambers and back into money-bill bundling.  House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) plopped on the minority leadership table a 40-pound omnibus appropriations conference report that also included several authorization measures and pounds of pork.  “Ronald Reagan was right,” Gephardt declared.  “It was a bad way to do business in 1988, and it’s a bad way to do business in 1998.”

Gephardt was no more successful than Reagan was in stemming the omnibus tsunamis.  Since 1998, according to the Congressional Research Service, Congress has resorted to omnibus or “consolidated” appropriations bills in each of the last 17 fiscal years.  Since fiscal year 1986, there have been 22 in all. 

Why would an ugly-but-early omnibus be any worse than the ugly-but-late bills?  At least in the earlier years, Congress (or at least the House) would pass most of the regular appropriations bills separately under an open amendment process.  In more recent years, the House has only managed to pass about half of the regular bills and then has stopped when the Senate took no action on any of them.  That in turn led to continuing appropriations resolutions (CRs) until an omnibus could be patched together.  When there was divided party control of Congress, this could be an especially painstaking process given differing partisan spending priorities. 

Those who think the majority leadership will allow for an open amendment process on an ugly-but-early omnibus might want to examine the historical record.  The last time that was tried was in John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) first year as speaker in 2011– a process that went on for days and then went nowhere in the Senate.  Every omnibus since has been closed to amendments.

The optics problem with first impression omnibus bills is the suspicion that numerous shady deals are tucked away in the nearly impenetrable layers.  And, that has proven embarrassingly true on several occasions, forcing Congress to eat dirt when it reconvened to enact the necessary “fixes.”

Republicans may think now that they have unified party control of Congress and the White House, an ugly but early approach will somehow be easy.  But nothing to date has proven easy in the 115th Congress.  It certainly won’t get easier when you start talking real money.  Even within the House GOP, various factions are already sparring over deficit reduction versus increased defense spending.  Moreover, the president’s desire to grease the skids by eliminating Senate filibusters is not going to happen.  So, as happened with the omnibus earlier this year, Democrats will eventually have to be brought into the mix for anything to pass.

As we used to joke in the House when we saw an omnibus coming down the chute, “Here comes the ominous; cue the ‘Jaws’ music.”  Congress is not likely to jump the shark by going ugly early.

Don Wolfensberger is a fellow at the  Bipartisan Policy Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center and former staff director of the House Rules Committee.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.