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“Banking around the Christmas tree
At the Christmas party he jumps” – Brenda Lee
It’s a Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill.
An annual custom of rocking around a convention Christmas treeadorned with hundreds of legislative ornaments, advent appropriations and mistletoe modifications.
A political Polar Express runs through the corridors of Congress almost every December. It’s always the last law to come out of Congress.
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“All aboard!” shouts the driver.
Load your Christmas needs into the baggage car of this train, or it will be left behind.
So lawmakers decorated their “Christmas tree” the only way they know how.
This resulted a few days ago in the colossal provisional spending bill of 1,547 pages to avoid a government shutdown.
The scope of the bill was impressive.
Do you want a hippo for Christmas? Surely you would have succeeded with this plan.
It didn’t take long House Republicans pulverized the legislation.
The US Capitol Christmas tree is lit during a ceremony in Washington, DC on December 3. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“It’s another mess,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said the morning after congressional leaders released the bill. “Here’s what you get: ‘Do this or shut down the government.’ So it’s very disappointing.”
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., didn’t mince words.
“It’s a total trash fire. I think it’s trash,” Burlison decreed. “It’s a shame that people are celebrating the arrival of DOGE and yet we’re going to vote for another billion dollars to be added to the deficit. It’s ironic.”
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., mocked his colleagues for talking out of both sides of their mouths when it came to spending.
“We keep saying we want to take the deficit and the debt seriously. But we keep voting to increase it. You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “This is irresponsible.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, lamented that this was business as usual.
“I mean, the swamp is going to fill up, right?” Roy offered.
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Speaker of the House Mike JohnsonR-La., said the following in the fall:
“We’ve done away with the Christmas omnibus. I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition. There will be no Christmas omnibus,” Johnson declared on September 24. “We’re not going to do any ‘buses’.”
So, yours truly pressed Johnson on his promise after frustrated Republicans berated him during a House GOP Conference meeting.
“You said in September there would be no more Christmas omnibuses. You weren’t doing any more ‘buses,'” I asked. “But how come this isn’t just another Christmas tree at the holidays?”
“Well, it’s not a Christmas tree. It’s not an omnibus,” Johnson replied.
Johnson is technically correct. In appropriations parlance, it’s not a true omnibus, although outside observers and many lawmakers themselves might colloquially refer to the massive bill as an “omnibus.” An omnibus is where the gift from Congress wraps the 12 individual spending measures into one package. A “minibus” is where a handful of tickets are bundled together.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks briefly with reporters just before a vote on an amended interim spending bill to avert a government shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Still, I reminded Johnson of the opprobrium directed at this legislation.
“They called this cram. They said it was trash. These are your own members calling it that,” I pointed out.
“Well, they haven’t even seen it yet,” Johnson said, even though the bill materialized the night before. “I have a couple of friends who say that about any year-end funding measure. That’s not an omnibus, OK? That’s a little CR (continuing resolution) that we had to add things to that. were out of our control.”
The legislation was provided with a high price to cover the full cost of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. A radioactive pay raise for lawmakers. Health provisions. Language about concert ticket prices. Emergency aid to farmers. And $110 billion to help cover the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“It was intended to be, and was until a few days ago, a very simple, very clean CR interim funding measure to get us into next year when we have a unified government,” Johnson said. “But a couple of things happened in between. We had what we call acts of God. We had these massive hurricanes.”
But then Elon Musk set fire to the account. President-elect Trump demanded an immediate increase in the debt ceiling. Debt limit deals are one of the most complex and controversial issues in Congress. They require weeks if not months of painstaking negotiations.
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This wasn’t as simple as presenting Santa at the mall with a wish list for Christmas morning.
The bill began gaining support just hours before the House planned a vote.
But to paraphrase Charles Dickens’ first line in “A Christmas Carol” about Jacob Marley, “That bill was dead: to begin with. There’s no doubt, about that.”
Democrats were stunned by the last-minute foreign ultimatums. Especially since Johnson attended the Army-Navy football game last week with Trump. How could they not discuss the contours of this bill?
“It was exploited by Elon Musk, who has apparently become the fourth branch of government,” scoffed Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. “So who is our leader, (House Minority Leader) Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y., supposed to negotiate? Is it Mike Johnson? Is it the Speaker of the House? Or is it Donald Trump? Or Is it Elon Musk. . Or is it someone else?”
Johnson and company prepared a slim 116-page bill to fund the government. But bipartisan lawmakers roasted that measure faster than chestnuts over an open fire.
Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, speaks during a town hall event in Pittsburgh on October 20. (Michael Swensen/Getty Images)
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., mocked Republicans for insisting they stick to their “three-day domestic rule.” This allows lawmakers to mull over bills for three days before a vote. However, Republicans were now pushing the new bill faster than shoppers running home with their treasures.
“Did you print it? How many pages is it? What happened to the 72 hour rule?” mocked Moskowitz.
The bill plummeted to an embarrassing defeat in the House. He scored only 174 yes, marked by 38 non-republicans.
“Democrats just voted to shut down the government,” said Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, vice president-elect. “They’ve asked for a shutdown, and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
By Friday there was already a third bill. And despite the complaints, lawmakers eventually passed the legislation. There was no need to go to “Plan Z,” popularized in “The SpongeBob Movie.” The House passed the bill in the early evening. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., arrived on the Senate floor Friday night.
“Democrats and Republicans just reached an agreement that will allow us to pass the CR tonight before the midnight deadline,” Schumer said.
Critics of the third bill might characterize the entire process as a “railroad.” But he was one real railroad that prevented the Senate from passing the bill on time. An unnamed Republican senator suspended Amtrak board nominees. But after senators resolved that issue, the Senate finally aligned with the House to avoid a shutdown around 12:45 a.m. ET Saturday, 45 minutes after the midnight deadline.
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The slim bill included disaster relief and emergency assistance to farmers. But when it came to appropriations, the legislation simply rolled over all current funding at current levels. It definitely was no a “Christmas tree”. He only kept the government running until March 14. So no holiday crisis.
Merry Christmas
But watch out for the Ides of March.
