The $1.7 trillion omnibus bill has passed congress, and it’s such a dumpster fire that it wasn’t even technically ready for the president’s signature.
No, I’m not kidding. Congress apparently passed a bill that wasn’t prepared to be signed. They then had to pass another continuing resolution to keep the government running in the meantime. If that’s not the perfect metaphor for how awful our federal government is, then one doesn’t exist.
And speaking of things that are unbelievable, the more we learn about the contents of the omnibus, the worse they get. Dan Crenshaw shared some things on Friday that I hadn’t seen before.
As Crenshaw points out, despite the fact that federal agencies were all given loads of cash under the guise of COVID-19 relief, they all still got large topline increases in this omnibus. For example, the IRS gets billions more on top of the $80 billion it was just given as part of the recently-passed reconciliation package. The EPA also gets more money for enforcement.
Past that, the White House gets a 19.5 increase in funding for employees while the millions are allocated to fund an “Office of Diversity and Inclusion” for congress. On the flip side, ICE and CBP get completely knee-capped by the omnibus package, with provisions included that don’t allow them to increase enforcement.
