Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel took a rhetorical flamethrower to the latest massive government spending bill on Tuesday, calling it “one of the ugliest, least transparent bits of lawmaking I’ve ever seen.”
The journalist ripped the “omnibus” bill for not only being massively expensive, but for having extraneous bits of legislation that should be voted on separately attached to it. She also claimed it was “cooked in a back room” and hidden from away from critical eyes.
Fox Business reported on the government spending bill Tuesday, stating that “Federal budget experts and lawmakers were scrambling to digest the giant, $1.7 trillion spending bill lawmakers released Tuesday morning, but early assessments confirm that the bill is very large and very expensive.”
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The report noted that “The bill clocks in at 4,155 pages” and “will likely draw arguments throughout the week that it is too large to read and understand in the few days Congress has to pass it before some funding for the government runs out on Friday.”
The bill already has prominent media critics, like Strassel, who composed a searing takedown of the spending bill on her Twitter account Tuesday.
In the first tweet of her thread, Strassel denounced the bill as “one of the ugliest, least transparent bits of lawmaking I’ve ever seen–and that’s saying something.” She indicated, “It isn’t just the spending, though the new domestic numbers are gross, given the trillions spent in the past few years,” but the way in which Congress has manipulated the bill to get what it wants.
She added, “It’s also that Congress, in a new trick, is attaching dozens of pieces of stand-alone legislation to this–retirement changes; public lands management; healthcare policy; cosmetics regulation; electoral count act changes; horseracing rules.”
Of the extra legislation, the columnist noted, “Every one deserves a full debate and a roll call vote, so that Americans can see where their representatives stand.”
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Strassel continued, “Instead, this monstrosity is cooked in a back room, and members can claim they had no choice but to vote against a shutdown–ducking accountability.”
She then concluded by blasting the length of the bill, which hampers lawmakers from really reading it before it’s voted on. She said, “Not that any members will have time to read this 4,155 pages of bad policy, obscene spending, and self-serving pork and earmarks. They’ll just vote and go home for Christmas. Your government at work. GOP and Ds are just as bad as each other.”
Other experts have condemned the bill. National Taxpayers Union executive vice president Brandon Arnold claimed, “This omnibus spending bill is a prime example of Washington at its absolute worst.”
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya MacGuineas remarked, “”This budget is too late and too big. Our politicians need to start taking budgeting more seriously.”
And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., warned, “When I’m speaker, their bills will be dead on arrival in the House if this nearly $2T monstrosity is allowed to move forward over our objections and the will of the American people.”
