It’s a lousy way to legislate<br>

Last week Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, also known as an “omnibus” appropriations bill, that combined the provisions of nine of the 13 separate appropriations bills that fund various parts of the federal government.

It was a frenetic process that ended with an up-or-down vote on a massive spending package that contained both good and bad legislation. No one person could possibly have had the time to read it entirely.

Sure enough, just before the vote a provision was discovered that could have allowed members of Congress to actually read individual taxpayers’ IRS files. Appropriately, it set off alarm bells across the Senate and was quickly disavowed. The ostensible sponsor in the House of Representatives told the news media that he was unaware the provision even existed; most likely it was the result of a combination of inexperienced or overzealous staff members, crashing deadlines, and not enough sleep.

That provision will be quickly removed from law when Congress reconvenes in early December. But who knows what else might pop up? Not to mention the bill’s notorious “pork-barrel” spending, including eye-rollers like $2.3 million for an international fertilizer development center, $25,000 for the study of mariachi music, $900,000 for an aquarium, and $100,000 for a weather museum at the home of “Punxsutawney Phil,” the famous groundhog.

Historically, the appropriations process has rarely been a pretty one. The Republican Congressional leadership shares some of the blame for this problem, as our Democratic predecessors did when they were in the majority. As long as there are politicians, there will be procrastination and pork-barrel spending. But a relatively recent phenomenon has made the problem markedly worse.

Over the course of the past year, obstructionist tactics by the Democratic minority prevented much of the federal government’s discretionary spending from even being legitimately debated, by grinding the budget bill and individual appropriations bills to a halt with endless amendments and other parliamentary delaying tactics. Thus we were prevented from even discussing many important programs in the Senate, with enough time to delve into details.

Much of this legislation, like all of the judicial nominations that Democrats have prevented from coming to the floor to a vote, could have been worked out and achieved bipartisan support. Instead, serious, important programs — from transportation to law enforcement — ended up being thrown into the same eleventh-hour maelstrom as fertilizer development and Punxsutawney Phil. This is a lousy way to legislate.

The bill had more than enough votes to pass, but I believed it was important to send a message that the congressional appropriations process has degenerated to the point that I can no longer support it, even though it included a number of important programs I had requested for Arizona.

Freed from obstructionist tactics, we would have a better opportunity to debate the merits of these and all of the other various federal programs and make more informed decisions about the tradeoffs that must be made to fulfill our responsibility to fund important services while keeping taxes as low as possible.

Certainly we could have ended up the year with a much smaller omnibus bill, or even none at all.

The nation would be better off if we did our work the right way.

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