Aren’t appropriations bills supposed to originate in the House? How does Harry Reid come up with an omnibus?
[Update a while later]
As is noted in comments, I was thinking of revenue bills, not spending bills.
[Update a while later]
Why so many? 13% of the people still approve of Congress. What is wrong with them?
[Update a couple minutes later]
The zombie Congress stumbles along. The really frightening thing about this zombie is that it doesn’t even have a brain to shoot.
[Bumped]
“Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Counting on the House to pass an amendment that substitutes the text of the Senate bill into an unrelated older House bill? I believe that’s what happened with the authorisation bill.
Although they’ve been caught by this several times recently, what they do is kidnap some hapless House bill – there are generally piles that pass that have no hope in the Senate and were symbolic. So House Bill 2472 “New holiday for mole rats” has an amendment in the Senate that renames it “Huge Pile of Cash Bill” and completely replaces the text.
Since there are changes, the House has to vote on it again, but “House Bill.” because it started there.
Because that’s so what the framers intended. 😉 Of course, it only works if the House cooperates, so arguably it’s not a big deal.
Nope, just revenue bills. See Article I, Section 7.
What’s the difference between a revenue bill and an appropriations bill?
One has the pork listed, the other does it strictly by inference.
MPM wrote:
What’s the difference between a revenue bill and an appropriations bill?
Revenue bills raise money. Appropriations bills spend it.
Mike
So there are three steps: revenue bill, appropriation bill, authorisation bill. Nice to see that your money is being confiscated following a defined process.
As far as not having a brain to shoot, thats not a new condition. A nice coat of fire always works, though – burn them on a stake.
Actually, Ted Kennedy died of a brain tumour…
Anyone know when this monster is expected to pass? – if it does, which it might not, thanks to the earmarks.
It’s so sickening how long the new NASA direction has been held hostage to the politicians. When this passes they’ll finally be able to cancel what they need to cancel and start what they need to start. Not that I have any hope that they’ll do it *well*, but at least it might be *interesting*.
At this point I no longer consider a post election congreff to be a ‘lame duck’. It’s more like an F-bomb you congreff. If the guy lost his election on Nov 2 then he needs to be packing his bags Nov 3 or the day the election is certified and in any event, is no longer allowed to vote seeing as to how his constituents have made their views known. It doesn’t take 3 months to travel to DC any more.