The Politics of Omnibus Bills
The silliness of singling out tiny measures.
Both HuffPo (“Tommy Tuberville Celebrates Broadband Funding He Voted Against“) and Business Insider (“Sen. Tommy Tuberville voted against a bill that just gave his state $1.4 billion for rural broadband. He’s celebrating it anyway.“) fall into one of the laziest and most annoying traps in American politics. Tuberville is a buffoon whose staff still calls him “Coach” rather than “Senator,” and it saddens but doesn’t surprise me that my erstwhile home state decided that he was their best choice to represent them. But this particular criticism is silly.
Were he presented with a standalone bill sending $1.4 billion to Alabama for rural broadband, he would almost surely have not only voted for it but begged to sign on as a co-sponsor. Instead, this funding comes from two massive omnibus bills—the so-called American Rescue Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—that spent $1.9 Trillion and $65 billion, respectively. The amount going to rural Alabama’s infrastructure is a rounding error.
This is further complicated by the lockstep partisan voting that has become the norm, especially for the Republican Party, over the last fifteen or so years. As a junior senator, it behooves Tuberville to vote with the GOP leadership if he wants plum committee assignments that will allow him to do things like pack these kinds of goodies into future laws.
Congressional reform could start with a single subject rule…one issue per vote…and stop this kind of cheap shot campaign fodder. Yeah, the representatives would have to spend more time actually voting, but that would be a small price to pay to have a record of actual substantive positions. That said, Tuberville is an embarrassment who is giving Ron Johnson a run for the title of Dumbest Senator.
While I understand the omnibus bill business, I do find it frustrating and dishonest for members of Congress who consistently vote against these bills and really do nothing to try and promote the individual issues turn around and take credit when their states get federal funds.
I would feel a bit differently if 1) people like Tuberville were actively working to get benefits for the state and 2) they weren’t screaming “socialism” and “woke mob” about the party that is willing to provide those benefits.
Again, I understand the point of the OP and agree that a lot of this political messaging is simplistic. But the reality is, at least to me from a normative POV, it gets a bit maddening to have the GOP be the party of “no” on these things (and, really, to be the party that does not seem particularly interested in governing as a general matter) to then have its members want to take political credit for highway funding (a couple of years ago) or broadband funding in the now.
@Charley in Cleveland: BTW, while I am sympathetic to the notion that some of these omnibus bills are too large and too catch-all, the reality is that the art of legislation in deal-making and that means the one item per bill idea is not viable.
@Steven L. Taylor: An absolutely fair point. The party simply being reflexively against, well, anything is a reflection on unseriousness. I think opposing these two bills was absolutely defensible given that they were both enormous grab bags largely unrelated to their titular purpose. But a serious party would have proposed viable alternative legislation that achieved the parts of the bills both parties and their constituents wanted.
While I agree with the argument that the Omnibus Bills are crazy large, I disagree with this;
Republicans are the party of NO…and this guy is too dumb but do anything other than follow directions. Eg. He is single handedly making the military weaker by holding up appointments, based on the need for old white guys to control women’s vaginas, and that position is going to lead to AL missing out on the Space Force HQ moving there.
@Daryl:
Beyond that, this isn’t really about Tuberville. It’s about the entirety of the GOP bragging about bring stuff home that they actually voted against. Cornyn was also caught doing the same thing on this same issue.
I’m quite sure Dems do this too, but Dems are less likely to vote no just to vote no.
It’s pretty friggin’ simple – don’t try to take credit for something you tried to prevent.
Slightly off topic but every time Tuberville is mentioned I have to bring up what a POS he actually is.
Tommy Tuberville left recruits at dinner to take Cincinnati job
Not only a lousy person but a lousy coach.
@Daryl:
Another side of this same coin is politicians fighting emergency funding until their state needs emergency funding. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are famous practitioners of this.
@Charley in Cleveland:
I’ll see what Steven said above, and raise him: one issue per vote is not even desirable. The way to get consensus on something is to add things that are important to potential “yes” votes. This is true in all facets of human interaction, not just politics. Or perhaps it is better to say that politics is simply the word we use to describe how we function when we are not actively killing each other.
Now, one thing I would really like is if every line of a bill had a name attached to it or, say, no more than three names. There is more than one niche industry that is heavily subsidized by the government seemingly without any reason, and reporters have been unable to find out who puts the renewals into the budget bills, but they are there every time nonetheless.
Dark Brandon…
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1674047719822819331
@Steven L. Taylor:
Given that Congress no longer operates according to normal order rules, and omnibus bills are created by leadership and not the normal committee process, what, exactly, is an individual member supposed to do? The only real option in in the Senate is to pull a Sinema or Manchin against your own leadership’s bill, which people also complain about. And if the leadership is controlled by the other party, an individual Senator has no ability to do what you’re suggesting.
@Steven L. Taylor: Well stated. The issue isn’t their taking credit, but their deep rooted opposition to the things they’re taking credit for. Would Tuberville have voted for broadband had Biden presented it as a stand alone issue? Or would the GOPs have found some way to scream “socialism” and “deficit” and somehow claim it would help “those people”? It’s the glaring hypocrisy, James, not the voting records. But I think, Steven, you allude to the real issue when you say,
Ds need more simplistic messaging, not less. Given the electorate, only simplistic messages work. They work for the GOPs.
Kevin Drum this morning is faulting David Dayen of American Prospect for saying Dems need to deliver more for average Americans. Drum thinks the problem is that we’re running out of big things to do. They’re both wrong. The problem is that Ds are getting less credit for actually doing this stuff than Tuberville is for lying about it. Ds need more and better simplistic messaging.
@gVOR10:
Agree.
Or just play hardball. Like dragging out the doling out of money until they extract a pound of flesh from the Republican senator. Or putting huge signs out with Biden’s smiling face announcing the project.
Kind of reminds me of a book long ago (The Ugly American?) where Americans delivered foreign aid and the local communists took credit by stenciling the boxes of aid in the local language which, of course, Americans couldn’t read.
@Charley in Cleveland: “Scope and object” legislation, including amendments, is very common at the state level and it works just fine.
It does give the Parliamentarian extra powers, but since the purpose is to separate legislation into bite-sized pieces, defaulting to separate bills is easily defensible.
@Andy: The fact that the Congress is disfunctional and the process is intractible does not necessarily make frustration about those two factors illegitimate, though it may make such frustration futile. As for what the typical Congressional representative is to do about having no control over the process, I suppose that depends on the biases of his/her constituents. In more enlightened and less polarized times when a significant segment of the electorate didn’t root for government paralysis, some Congressional representatives used to lament the fact that measure was not what they would have hoped for, but still supported it “for the good it will do for our people/district.” But yes, the hypocrisy of praising and taking credit for the
porkvaluable infrastructure improvements in a bill that you tried to spike is more in keeping with the times.Based on what? Why does Tuberville have to be “presented” with bills to help Alabama? He should be working with the Alabama congressional delegation to craft and present such legislation himself. And he would be if he and the majority of his party cared about anything other than obstructing progress, smearing minority groups, protecting Trump, and peddling radical right exremist propaganda — which they do not.
Did Tuberville propose or urge or his House Republican colleagues to pass a standalone rural broadband bill? No. Did Tuberville hold a press conference calling for the passage of a rural broadband bill? No. Did Tuberville do a media round complaining about lack of rural broadband? No. He only started pretending to care after Democrats got it done.
Because Tuberville has zero interest in legislating. Yet he has all the time in the world to harm our national security by blocking defense nominees, cater to rightwing media nonsense, and bash Biden. With painfully few exceptions, that’s pretty much all the Trump era’s “conservative” (pfft lol) Republicans have to offer: fearmongering, hatemongering, Trump apologetics, science-denial, and saying no.
Republicans quickly proposed and passed standalone bills on gas stoves and other irrelevant nonsense drummed up from Fox News fever dreams. So I don’t think it’s silly to remind voters that while most GQP politicians aren’t using their bully pulpits to advocate for real problem-solving and aren’t passing serious laws to improve American lives, Biden and Democrats did.
@Daryl:
I’m glad to see Sen. Tuberville has finally become a rural broadband convert in 2023, after Biden and Democrats did the heavy lifting. It took him till this year to sign onto the Senate Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act. (I’m sure that had nothing to do with the looming groundbreaking of Biden’s broadband projects he didn’t lift a finger for. How convenient.)
Where was Tuberville before, in 2021 when his advocacy was needed? Inquiring minds want to know. But better late than never.
@Daryl:
Here’s Nancy Mace, who is a leading proponent of impeaching Joe Biden, bragging about money that Joe Biden got for her state as though she actually had done it with her own hard work.
Except…you know…voting for it.
https://twitter.com/RepNancyMace/status/1674133393108246528
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, yes, the systemic problems are driving this. Politicians hyping up specific measures in huge bills they had no control over and opposed for other reasons isn’t exactly a new or unique phenomenon.
And contra DK’s point, what he suggests about the Alabama delegation crafting legislation only works when there is regular order, which there isn’t, and hasn’t been for some time now. Senators and Representatives can submit bills (and they often do for messaging purposes), but those bills go straight to the circular file and are never taken up by a committee and processed. And that’s because the leadership controls the entire process, including writing the bills and pushing them through. It’s the Hastert rule times ten – no bill comes to the floor – or is even considered – without leadership’s assent.
And this is often how it works in parliamentary systems where parties have more power and leadership controls the agenda. But we have this weird dynamic now where our parties are extraordinarily weak, but the President, Speaker, and Senate Majority leader are extraordinarily strong compared to this historical norm.
Lack of regular order in congress has not stopped Republicans from passing standalone bills about gas stoves and other silly stuff. So congressional dysfunction is just an excuse, and it’s not a good one. They can and do still propose, sign onto, and even pass bills regarding the (lame) issues rightwing media tells them to care about.
And congressional dysfunction has nothing to do with Republicans failing to use their bully pulpits to seriously push broadband or other tangible improvements. They can do that at any time, regular order or no.
What the right doen’t like is dustups like these highlighting that the stuff modern Republicans waste time on is mostly nonsensical and unimportant — offering no real daily benefit to Americans relative to what Biden and Democrats spend their effort and energy on.
@DK:
The Republicans can pass those silly bills because that is what their leadership prioritizes. Those bills were not brought to the floor via regular order and the committee process; the leadership still maintains near absolute control of the House agenda.
I agree that this speaks about the priorities of Republican Congressional leadership, and not in a good way, but that doesn’t negate the fact that no bill can get to the floor without the consent of leadership. So if there were a group of Republicans who wanted to push broadband or “tangible improvement” they would not get anywhere without the leadership’s assent.
And the same is true for when Democrats are in control.
There is no way to get any legislation to the floor except through the leadership – they control the legislative agenda. That is the very definition of the absence of regular order.
@Steven L. Taylor:
The “art of legislation in deal-making” . It is no longer (if it ever was) anticipated that deals would be made in good faith. Underlying the this kind of deal making is the deeply embedded notion that the legislators don’t trust their colleagues to follow thru on promises made in a negotiation.
Would it be constitutional to have line items in the Omnibus triggered by the votes of their Representatives and Senators?
It doesn’t even have to be a majority, just enough that they have “skin in the game” (to use language that Sen. Coach might pretend to understand).
If they have to provide some support for the whole bill, they might actually have to negotiate for things they want elsewhere in the bill, rather than coddle their base and rely on Democrats to actually do the hard work of governing with all the tradeoffs that requires. Try to break the performative nature of the Republicans.
@Andy:
Yes you’re right, and it also to the priorities of the entire Republican conference. Members of Congress are not potted plants. Republicans have no problem pushing their leadership around and making demands thereof.
If the Republican conference tells McCarthy and Scalise to put a rural roadband bill on the floor or else, leadership is gonna put a rural broadband bill on the floor. If Republicans not in leadership have time to run up to Manhattan to hold a grandstanding show hearing attacking Alvin Bragg to protect Trump, they have time to hold hearings in rural Ohio about the crisis in rural hospital closures. If they have time to go on TV to whine about Hunter Biden and Pride merch, they have time to go on TV and call for policy change to reverse trends making gun violence the #1 killer of our children.
Sadly, it’s not just the Republican congressional leadership’s priorities that are out of whack: much of the Republican Party rank-and-file has gone off the deep end of extremism and is no longer serious about governing. Hence why they elect what Liz Cheney just called “idiots” who do not govern.
Republican congressional leadership did not prevent GOP convention delegates from adopting a policy platform in 2020. The party chose instead to pass a resolution that read in part, “The Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda.” Congressional dysfunction didn’t force the party faithful reduce itself to an unserious Trump cult with no platform.
The GOP needs to get its act together and stop making excuses.
Oh, I don’t know Andy, leave Congress if they can’t stand to get their hands messy making the sausage? I mean, yes, it’s ugly, but this is how shit gets done in the US Congress. Get used to it, or get out.
@DK: That’s entirely too hard and too much sacrifice for the entire Republican party right now, my friend. How are they gonna keep that grift going on “carefully edited” soundbites, clickbait, and standing up to “woke” if they actually have to govern when they’re in power?! 😐
@DK:
There are two ways to solve that problem — reduce gun deaths or increase some other deaths — and given how our Republicans love guns… how would you feel about rolling back every vaccination mandate so measles takes the #1 spot?
@Daryl:
It was never supposed to move there in the first place. While Huntsville has a decent case for having a space infrastructure, Colorado Springs has a far better one. Biden was already signaling that he was going to reverse the Trump decision to move it back in March, before Tuberville’s stunt.
@Andy:
Well, yes. And the Democratic Party’s leadership believes in infrastructure improvements and the Republican leadership does not. This is true, in the main, of the rank-and-file members as well.
I don’t think that the main issue is the lack of regular order (which is a House thing more than a Senate thing, BTW).
A side note: one of the reasons I think that we would be better off with more parties is that it would create more possibilities for negotiation over the legislation, but that is a much longer response.
@Bob2@Youngstown: Well, yes and no. I would note that the deals I am talking about are among those who vote for the bill. That is intra-party negotiations. Trust me, it is alive and well.
Regardless, the notion that bills should be mono-topics, as appealing as that might sound, is just not viable.
@Andy: BTW, Lauren Boebert brought her impeachment articles to the floor by violating regular order. Ditto the Schiff censure motions (the one that failed and the one that didn’t).
Indeed, McCarthy definitely did not want the impeachment articles on the floor (and indeed, eventually maneuvered them to committee–but only after Boebert forced his hand on the floor of the chamber).
I will admit that I am not a Congress specialist and it has been a decade and a half (or more) since I taught Congress with a focus on the rules, but I think you are making the lack of regular order do more work in your argument than is warranted (as well as ignoring the fact that leadership in the House has long had a huge amount of agenda control, even when regular order is more, well, regular. They have always controlled the agenda by controlling the Rules Committee and, by extension, the calendar).
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yes, privileged motions are specifically designed to avoid regular order and have increasingly become weaponized. That is partly a function of members having little power to move the needle except by gimmicks.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective. You’re right that leadership has always had a lot of influence, but committee work was still important, and regular members could still offer amendments for consideration. That all is mostly gone now. Now, most major pieces of legislation are written behind closed doors by leadership and negotiated among caucus leaders. The committee process is avoided and individual members have no ability to offer amendments for consideration. The bill is the presented as a fait accompli and passed with little debate and with few members knowing or understanding the details.
I think this is problematic for a number of reasons.
For one, it’s undemocratic in that the legislative agenda is completely centralized.
Secondly, with binary partisanship, it makes what I termed the Hastert-rule x10. Because the onus is on the Speaker, the Speaker will not allow any legislation come to the floor that would threaten their Speakership, even if it would pass with a majority of votes. Again, not very democratic.
Third, it promotes cronyism. The old-fashioned notion that a group of legislatures can convince their colleagues on a committee or in the body generally to consider some new or novel pieces of legislation can’t happen under this system, because the Speaker has all the power. Again, not democratic.
Fourth, bills don’t get enough scrutiny, particularly concerning mistakes and errors.
Fourth, legislative success depends primarily on the political skill and acumen of the Speaker. Pelosi was a genius with this which is a big reason why Democrats were so successful legislatively under her leadership. I think she was exceptional and wrangling her coalition and working with the Senate Majority leader. She has set a high standard that I’m skeptical that future Speakers can easily live up to.
Moreover, the institution wasn’t designed to be run this way. If we had a multi-party system, then the coalition, leader-based structure would work, but we don’t. The institution is designed for legislative action to proceed from the bottom up and not the top down.
Lots of people talk about Congressional dysfunction, and my view is this is a big piece of that pie.
The problem is similar in the Senate, although the rules are different. Legislation is still primarily driven by leadership, and Senators have little ability to modify legislation except by pulling a Manchin and refusing to vote for what leadership wants, which carries a political price. The alternative is engaging in Senate gimmicks like putting holds on appointments.
@Andy: But to your narrow point, if members really wanted to do things and were simply being stymied by leadership, they would be using gimmicks and other tools to try and legislate/make policy.
Instead, we see the gimmicks being used for culture wars topic and other nonsense.