“Walking around the Christmas tree
At the Christmas Party” – Brenda Lee
It's a Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill.
An annual habit of swinging around Congress Christmas treedecorated with hundreds of legislative ornaments, Advent allotments and mistletoe adornments.
The political Polar Express races through the halls From Congress Almost every December. It's always the last piece of legislation to come out of the congressional station.
What to expect as Republicans try to salvage the spending package and avoid a government shutdown
“All aboard!” The conductor shouts.
Load your Noel necessities into the baggage car on this train, otherwise they will be left behind.
So, the legislators decorated their “Christmas tree” the only way they knew how.
This led a few days ago to the release of a massive 1,547-page temporary spending bill to avert a government shutdown.
The sheer scope of the bill was astonishing.
Do you want a hippopotamus for Christmas? You sure were going to get it with that plan.
It wasn't even long Republicans in the House of Representatives They crushed the legislation.
The lighting of the US Capitol Christmas tree during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on December 3. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)
“It's another jam,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, angrily, the morning after congressional leaders released the bill. “This is what you get. ‘Do this or shut down the government.’ So, it’s very disappointing.”
Rep. Eric Burleson, Republican of Missouri, did not offer his criticism.
“It's a complete dumpster fire. I think it's trash,” Burleson decreed. “It's shameful that people are celebrating the coming of DOGE, yet we will vote to add another billion dollars to the deficit. It's ridiculous.”
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., mocked his colleagues for being too vocal when it comes to spending.
“We keep saying we want to take the deficit and 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 flood, right?” Roy show.
A traveler's guide to what happened to the temporary spending bill
House Speaker Mike JohnsonR-La., said the following in the fall:
Johnson announced on September 24: “We have broken the All-Bus Christmas. I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition. There will be no All-Bus Christmas. We will not take any buses.”
So she pressed Johnson on his promise after frustrated Republicans berated him during a House GOP conference meeting.
“You said last September that there would be no more Christmas omnibuses,” I asked him. “You don’t use Christmas ‘buses’ anymore.” “But how can this not be another Christmas tree for the holidays?”
“Well, it's not a Christmas tree. It's not an omnibus,” Johnson replied.
Johnson is technically right. In appropriations parlance, this is not a true omnibus bill — although outside observers and many lawmakers themselves would colloquially refer to the massive bill as “omnibus.” An omnibus is where Congress's gift brings together all 12 individual spending measures into one package. The “minibus” is where a group of bills are grouped together.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Los Angeles, speaks briefly to reporters before a vote on a temporary spending bill amended to prevent a government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
However, Johnson recalled the disdain directed at this legislation.
“They stopped this cramming. They said it was garbage. These are your members who call it that,” she noted.
“Well, they haven't seen it yet,” Johnson said, despite the bill passing the night before. “I have some friends who will say that about any year-end financing measure. This is not a blanket solution, okay? This is a small decision (an ongoing decision) that we had to add things to that were outside of our control.”
The legislation was pricey to cover the full cost of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Radiant pay increases for legislators. Health care provisions. Language about concert ticket prices. Urgent aid for farmers. And $110 billion to help cover the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helen and Milton.
“This measure was supposed to be, and was until recent days, a very simple, very clean stopgap funding measure to get us through next year when we have a united government,” Johnson said. “But there were some overlapping things. We had, as we say, acts of God. We had these massive hurricanes.”
But then Elon Musk Rake the bill. President-elect Trump called for an immediate increase in the debt ceiling. Debt cap deals are one of the most complex and controversial issues in Congress. It requires weeks, if not months, of painstaking negotiations.
It wasn't as simple as presenting a wish list to Santa at the mall on Christmas morning.
The bill began bleeding support just hours before it was scheduled to vote in the House.
But to paraphrase Charles Dickens's opening line in “A Christmas Carol” about Jacob Marley, “This law is dead: at first. There is no doubt at all about it.”
Democrats were astonished by last-minute foreign ultimatums. Especially since Johnson attended the Army-Navy football game last week with Trump. How did they not discuss the features of this bill?
Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, mocked the bill: “It was torpedoed by Elon Musk, who has apparently become the fourth branch of government.” “So who is our leader (House Minority Leader) Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, who is he supposed to be negotiating with? 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 last?”
Johnson and his partners then prepared an elegant 116-page bill to fund the government. But lawmakers from both parties roasted this measure faster than chestnuts in an open fire.
SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during a city hall event in Pittsburgh on October 20. (Michael Swensen/Getty Images)
Representative Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida, mocked Republicans for insisting they adhere to the internal three-day rule. This allows lawmakers to consider bills for three days before voting. However, Republicans were now racing to get the new bill to the floor faster than shoppers were rushing home with their treasures.
“Did you print it? How many pages is it? What happened to the 72 hour rule?” Moskowitz sneered.
The bill suffered an embarrassing defeat on the House floor. He received only 174 yeses, including 38 Republican nos.
Senator J.D. Vance, the vice president-elect, claimed that “Democrats just voted to shut down the government.” “They asked for closure, and I think that's exactly what they'll get.”
By Friday, there was a third bill. Despite the grumbling, lawmakers finally passed the legislation. There was no need to go to “Plan Z”, made famous in “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie”. The House of Representatives approved the bill early in the evening. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., arrived on the Senate floor late Friday night.
“Democrats and Republicans have just reached an agreement that will allow us to pass the bill tonight before the midnight deadline,” Schumer said.
Critics of Bill III might describe the entire process as “railroading.” But it was actual Railroad that prevented the Senate from passing the bill on time. An unnamed Republican senator has suspended nominees for Amtrak's board of directors. But once senators resolved that issue, the Senate finally allied with the House to block a shutdown at around 12:45 a.m. EST on Saturday, 45 minutes after the midnight deadline.
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The slim bill included disaster aid and emergency assistance to farmers. But when it comes to appropriations, the legislation simply renewed all existing funding at current levels. It definitely was no “Christmas tree”. This kept the government going until 14 March. So there was no holiday crisis.
Merry Christmas.
But beware from mid-March.
