Seeking to provide a perspective other that might contribute to an understanding of the massive omnibus spending bill Congress is about to pass, I asked a knowledgeable source about the dynamics underlying Republican support for it. This is what I understand to be the Republican case for the bill on the Senate side. I pass it on for the sake of those trying to gain some perspective on what we have here.
The source attributed Republican support primarily to the bill’s setting defense spending at the level of the National Defense Authorization Act while keeping domestic spending at Biden’s budget request — with the addendum that, under budgetary rules, it’s actually a little better than that. Under the applicable rules, spending for veterans counts under domestic spending. All that is deemed to be good on its own terms and also to begin to break the habit of Democrats insisting on equivalent increases each year for defense and domestic spending.
Republicans also believe they secured some small wins — a fentanyl scheduling bill, an antitrust bill targeting Chinese malfeasance, and the TikTok ban — but of course had some small losses too. Republicans believe they kept out the worst bills, such as authorization of marijuana banking, promoting the journalism cartel, and so on. There was no shortage of bad ideas.
On a comparative basis, Republicans believe this is actually one of the cleaner omnibus bills of its kind in the Senate. Because Democrats wanted it more than Republicans did, they had to give in on spending and policy riders. Most Republican senators feared that wouldn’t be the case in 60 days insofar as a sizable number of Republican representatives have never voted for any spending bill and one wouldn’t expect them to start now. Thus, Kevin McCarthy would have been forced to go to Democrats for votes and they would have demanded ransom in the form of higher domestic spending or more liberal policy riders.
That was the dynamic in 2015, even though Boehner had just been ejected over this kind of thing: Ryan had to give away the store to get Democrat votes. And the disarray over McCarthy’s election itself did nothing to assuage those concerns. Accordingly, even though counterintuitive with a new GOP House majority arriving, the thinking is that this bill is more to the right (or less bad) than a bill would have been in 60 days.
It is conceded that this is not pretty or desirable, but under the circumstances, possibly the best outcome that could have been hoped for. And if the House can’t pass spending bills for the next fiscal year, this will lock in the higher defense number and lower domestic number for the rest of Biden’s term.
Many senators — even appropriators — are fed up with this continued cycle. There is some hope for forcing a change early next year rather than waiting for Senators to throw up their hands up in disgust yet again.
