By Mark Tapscott
December 22, 2020 Updated: December 22, 2020

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Such unrelated provisions have become commonplace in the past decade as Congress has regularly failed to meet its deadlines for doing annual budgets through 12 separate major appropriation bills debated in committees and then enacted through floor votes of the Senate and House under the Budget and Impoundment Acts of 1974.

Instead, under Democratic and Republican leadership, Congress has routinely waited until the last minute to enact massive “omnibus” spending bills like the CCP virus relief measure and the $1.4 trillion spending package that funds the government until Sept. 30, 2021.

The pressure is immense on every senator and representative to drop objections to particular provisions they oppose in order to vote for such bills, because they contain so many essential provisions.

Even so, this year’s last-minute rush produced protests from members across the ideological spectrum.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the Senate’s most conservative members, blasted the process on Twitter, condemning how the combined bills were enacted:

“It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then—hours later—demand an up or down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read. #CongressIsBroken.”

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