...Critics say that the omnibus shows that Washington is broken and that senators and members of Congress are incompetent. They lament the fact that lawmakers procrastinate to the last minute what they could have accomplished all year. In reality, the system is functioning just the way people in power want it to function.
Sure, lawmakers could have followed a process in which a budget is unveiled and passed in the spring, and all priorities are discussed within relevant committees in full public view for months. Legislative text could be released well in advance of any vote, allowing for plenty of time to view it and debate amendments. And lawmakers could divide different policies into different bills so that each can be evaluated on its own merits. But running things this way would risk subjecting policies to actual debate.
Instead, Congress has passed a series of short-term funding measures since the fiscal year began on October 1 so they could manufacture a crisis in the waning days of 2022. This has allowed congressional leaders and their staffs to hide behind closed doors, load a freight train with their preferred government-funded goodies, get the media to describe it as a “must-pass bill,” and dare anybody to vote against the final product and risk shutting down the government ahead of Christmas. Any senator who wants Electoral Count Act reform will have to vote to increase funding for Medicaid; anybody who wants to finance the military will need to vote to increase spending on food stamps and for more infrastructure money. Anybody who does not blindly agree to pass this mammoth piece of legislation will be accused of leaving a lump of coal in the stockings
This may look like a chaotic mess, but describing it in such a way lets congressional leaders off of the hook. This is not a system that is buckling. From the perspective of those in power who want to ram through their priorities with as little scrutiny as possible, this is a system operating at peak efficiency.
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