WASHINGTON, DC — Congressional negotiators racing to finalize a year-end spending package before Friday’s deadline confirmed Sunday that the 2,400-page omnibus is on track for passage, pending the resolution of approximately eleven pages dealing with federal expenditures and the other 2,389 pages, which lawmakers described as “the important stuff.”
The bill, which must pass before the holiday recess so members can return home and complain about Washington, currently includes funding for the Pentagon, the IRS, and a federally protected scenic byway in Western Pennsylvania that runs exclusively past three properties owned by the same gentleman.
“We’re very close,” said a senior Senate aide who has not made eye contact with sunlight since Tuesday. “We’ve resolved the FAA reauthorization, the dairy subsidy framework, and a provision renaming a post office after a man who is, frankly, still alive and still under indictment. The remaining sticking points are mostly the part where the government gets money.”
Among the surviving riders: a $14 million earmark for a maritime museum in a landlocked district, language exempting a single named hedge fund from a regulation it had not yet been subjected to, and a four-page section, inserted at 3:40 a.m. Saturday, that simply reads as a list of zip codes with no accompanying explanation. Staff have been instructed not to ask.
Negotiators have reportedly agreed to drop a bipartisan provision lowering insulin costs in exchange for keeping a provision that allows a defense contractor in Huntsville to bill the government for office snacks. Both sides described the trade as “a win for the American people,” though neither specified which Americans, or which people.
Rep. Brent Cauley (R-OH), asked whether he had read the bill, said he had read “the parts that mattered,” which he later clarified meant the table of contents and a single paragraph his chief of staff had highlighted in yellow. Sen. Marisol Pekar (D-NM) said she planned to vote yes “with reservations,” then declined to specify the reservations, then declined to specify which bill.
Leadership has committed to releasing the final text no fewer than four hours before the vote, allowing each member of Congress roughly 600 pages per hour of reading time, or, more realistically, time to draft a press release describing the bill they have not read as either a generational betrayal or a hard-won bipartisan victory, depending on the letter after their name.
The package is expected to pass by a comfortable margin Friday evening, after which lawmakers will fly home, denounce the dysfunction in Washington, and pledge to return in January determined to do this exact thing again next December.