Having missed the October 1 deadline for funding nine of the 13 government agencies that had been neglected, a lame-duck Congress made up for that lack of action after the November elections by enacting the Fiscal Year 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act, a $388 billion “Omnibus” spending package, contained in a 3,000-page document that weighed some 14 pounds. Legislators had little or no time to sift through the volume, and rubber-stamping approval was the name of the game. Voting was delayed temporarily when legislators, to their great consternation, discovered a provision that would have allowed staff members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to go into Internal Revenue Service facilities to examine individual tax returns. Legislators deleted the provision from this “Omnibus” bill.
As they have done in previous years, legislators seized the opportunity to load the bill with “earmarked” amendments, more commonly known as “pork,” that will cost taxpayers $15.8 billion. The number of amendments, 11,772, is the most ever in one bill and several thousand more than appeared in previous “Omnibus” bills. Most were inserted with time running out and passed unchallenged; to challenge a provision would cause legislators to play the “tit-for-tat” game or, if you oppose my amendment, I shall oppose yours. And, of course, such amendments allow legislators to point with pride at the pork they have provided for their constituencies.
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