‘Rocking around the Christmas tree
Here’s to the Christmas hop” – Brenda Lee
It’s a Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill.
An annual custom to rock around a conference Christmas treedecorated with hundreds of legislative ornaments, Advent appropriations and mistletoe amendments.
A political Polar Express chugs through the corridors of Congress almost every year in December. It’s always the last piece of legislation that comes out of the congressional station.
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“Everyone aboard!” the conductor shouts.
Make sure your Noel needs are loaded into the baggage car of this train or he will be left behind.
So lawmakers decorated their “Christmas tree” the only way they know how.
That resulted a few days ago in the colossal 1,547-page interim spending bill to prevent a government shutdown.
The magnitude of the bill was breathtaking.
Do you want a hippo for Christmas? With this plan you would definitely have made it.
It didn’t take long Republicans in the House of Representatives pulverized the legislation.
The U.S. Capitol Christmas tree is lit during a ceremony in Washington, DC, December 3. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“It’s a mess again,” fumed Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, 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 Burlison, R-Mo., hasn’t gift-wrapped his criticism.
“It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s trash,” Burlison ordered. “It’s shameful that people are celebrating the arrival of DOGE, and yet we’re going to vote for another billion dollars added to the budget deficit. It’s ironic.”
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., mocked his colleagues for talking out of both sides of their mouths when it came to spending.
“We keep saying that we want to take the deficit and debt seriously. But we continue to vote 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 goes swamps, right?” Roy offered.
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Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike JohnsonR-La., said the following in the fall:
“We have broken the Christmas omnibus. I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition. There will be no Christmas omnibus,” Johnson declared on September 24. “We won’t be making ‘buses’ anymore.”
So yours truly pressed Johnson on his promise after frustrated Republicans upbraided him at a House Republican Party meeting.
‘You said in September that there would be no more Christmas omnibuses. You didn’t drive ‘buses’ anymore,” I asked. “But why isn’t this just another Christmas tree during the holidays?”
“Well, it’s not a Christmas tree. It’s not an omnibus,” Johnson replied.
Johnson is technically right. In appropriations terms, it’s not a truly catch-all issue — even though outside observers and many lawmakers themselves might colloquially call the massive bill an “omnibus.” In an omnibus, all twelve individual spending measures are packaged in one package. A “minivan” is a place where a handful of bills are bundled together.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks briefly to reporters just before the vote on an amended interim spending bill to avoid a government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Still, I reminded Johnson of the defamation of this legislation.
“They called this crap. They said it was nonsense. That’s your own members who called it that,” I pointed out.
“Well, they haven’t even seen it yet,” Johnson said, even though the bill became reality the night before. “I have some friends who will say that about any year-end funding measure. This is not an omnibus, okay? This is a little CR (continuing resolution) where we had to add things that were out of our control.”
The legislation came with a hefty price tag to cover the entire cost of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. A radioactive pay raise for lawmakers. Healthcare facilities. Language about concert ticket prices. Emergency aid for farmers. And $110 billion to help cover the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“The intention was, and was until recently, a very simple, very clean emergency funding measure for CR, to get to us next year when we have a unified government,” Johnson said. ‘But a few things came up. We had, as we say, acts of God. We had huge hurricanes.”
But then Elon Musk set the account on fire. President-elect Trump demanded an immediate increase in the debt ceiling. Debt limit agreements are one of the most complex and controversial issues in Congress. They require weeks, if not months, of painstaking negotiations.
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This wasn’t as simple as handing Santa at the mall a wish list of items for Christmas morning.
The bill began losing support just hours before the House scheduled a vote.
But to paraphrase Charles Dickens’ opening line in ‘A Christmas Carol’ about Jacob Marley: ‘That bill was dead: for starters. There’s no doubt about that.’
Democrats were baffled by the last-minute ultimatums. Especially since Johnson attended the Army-Navy football game with Trump last week. How could they not have discussed the contours of this bill?
“It was blown up by Elon Musk, who has apparently become the fourth branch of government,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., scoffed at the bill. “So, who should our leader, Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., negotiate with? Is it Mike Johnson? Is he the Speaker of the House of Representatives? Or is it Donald Trump? Or is it Elon Musk. Or is it someone else?”
Johnson and company then drafted a meager 116-page bill to fund the government. But bipartisan lawmakers roasted those chestnuts faster than chestnuts on an open fire.
SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speak at a town hall event in Pittsburgh on October 20. (Michael Swensen/Getty Images)
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., mocked Republicans for insisting they stick to their internal “three-day rule.” This allows lawmakers to consider bills for three days before voting. Yet Republicans now trashed the new bill faster than shoppers rushed home with their treasures.
‘Did you print it? How many pages is it? What happened to the 72-hour rule?’ Moscowwitz scoffed.
The bill plummeted to an embarrassing defeat in the House of Representatives. It scored just 174 yeses, punctuated by an eye-popping 38 Republican nos.
“The Democrats just voted to shut down the government,” claimed Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, the vice president-elect. “They asked for a shutdown, and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
There was a third bill on Friday. And despite grumbling, lawmakers ultimately passed the legislation. There was no need to go to “Plan Z,” made popular in “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.” The House of Representatives approved the bill early in the evening. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came to the Senate floor late Friday night.
“Democrats and Republicans just reached an agreement that will allow us to pass the CR tonight before the midnight deadline,” Schumer said.
Critics of the third bill might characterize the entire process as a “railway.” But it was one factual railroad that prevented the Senate from passing the bill on time. An unnamed Republican senator placed a hold on nominees for Amtrak’s board. But once senators resolved that issue, the Senate ultimately joined the House of Representatives to avoid the shutdown around 12:45 p.m. ET Saturday, 45 minutes after the midnight deadline.
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The slimmed-down bill included disaster relief and relief for farmers. But when it came to appropriations, the legislation simply renewed all current funding at current levels. It certainly was not a ‘Christmas tree’. It simply kept the government running until March 14. So no holiday crisis.
Merry christmas.
But beware of the Ides of March.
