“Rocking around the Christmas tree
“Hopping at the Christmas Party” – Brenda Lee
It’s a Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill.
An annual custom to rock out at a congressional session Christmas treedecorated with hundreds of law ornaments, Advent permits and mistletoe modifications.
A political polar express chugs through the halls of the Congress almost every December. It is always the last bill to emerge from the House of Congress.
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“All aboard!” shouts the conductor.
Load your Noel supplies into the baggage car of this train or it will be left behind.
So the lawmakers decorated their “Christmas tree” the only way they knew how.
That led to the whopping 1,547-page interim spending bill a few days ago to prevent a government shutdown.
The scope of the bill was breathtaking.
Would you like a hippopotamus for Christmas? With this plan you would definitely have made it.
It didn’t take long until Republicans in the House of Representatives pulverized the legislation.
The U.S. Capitol Christmas tree is lit during a ceremony in Washington, DC on December 3rd. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“It’s another mess,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, fumed the morning after congressional leaders released the bill. “This is what you get: ‘Do this or close the government.’ So it’s very disappointing.
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., didn’t gift-wrap his criticism.
“It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” Burlison decreed. “It is shameful that people are celebrating the coming of DOGE and yet we will vote to add another billion dollars to the deficit. That’s ironic.”
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., mocked his colleagues for talking out of their mouths on spending issues.
“We keep saying that we want to take the deficit and debt seriously. But we continue to vote for an increase. You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “That’s irresponsible.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, lamented that this was business as usual.
“I mean, the swamp’s going to flood, right?” Roy offered.
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Speaker of the House Mike JohnsonR-La., said this in the fall:
“We broke the Christmas omnibus. I have no intention of returning to this terrible tradition. There will be no Christmas omnibus,” Johnson said on September 24th. “We won’t do any ‘buses’.”
So they seriously pressed Johnson on his promise after frustrated Republicans rebuked him during a meeting of the House GOP conference.
“You said in September that there would be no more Christmas buses. “You haven’t done ‘buses’ anymore,” I asked. “But why isn’t this 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 budget parlance, it’s not a true omnibus — even though outside observers and many lawmakers themselves might colloquially refer to the expansive bill as an “omnibus.” In an omnibus, Congress packages all 12 individual spending measures into one package. A handful of banknotes are bundled into a “minibus”.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks briefly with reporters just before a vote on an amended interim spending bill to prevent a government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Nevertheless, I reminded Johnson of the opprobrium directed at this legislation.
“They canceled this stuff. They said it was garbage. “It’s your own members calling it that,” I remarked.
“Well, they haven’t even seen it yet,” Johnson said, even though the bill went into effect the night before. “I have a few friends who will say that about any end-of-year funding measure. This isn’t a catch-all term, okay? This is a small CR (continuing resolution) that we had to add things to 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. Language on concert ticket prices. Emergency aid for farmers. And $110 billion to address the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“It should be, and until recently was, a very simple, very clean bridge funding measure for CR to get us into next year when we have a unified government,” Johnson said. “But a few things happened in between. We had, as we say, force majeure. We had these massive hurricanes.”
But then Elon Musk lit the bill on fire. President-elect Trump called for an immediate increase in the debt ceiling. Debt limit agreements are among the most complex and contentious issues in Congress. They require weeks, if not months, of careful negotiations.
It wasn’t as simple as handing Santa Claus at the mall a wish list of items for Christmas morning.
Just hours before the House scheduled a vote, support for the bill began to wane.
But to paraphrase Charles Dickens’ opening line in “A Christmas Carol” about Jacob Marley: “This bill was dead from the start. There can be no doubt about it at all.”
Democrats were taken aback by the last-minute ultimatums from outside. Especially since Johnson attended the Army-Navy football game with Trump last week. How could they not discuss 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 (House Minority 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 his company then prepared a slim 116-page bill to finance the government. But bipartisan lawmakers roasted the measure faster than chestnuts on an open fire.
SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during a town hall event in Pittsburgh on October 20. (Michael Swensen/Getty Images)
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Florida, mocked Republicans for insisting they stick to their internal “three-day rule.” That allows lawmakers to consider bills for three days before a vote. But the Republicans brought the new bill to the table faster than buyers who rushed home with their treasures.
“Did you print it?” How many pages does it have? “What happened to the 72-hour rule?” Moskowitz scoffed.
The bill ended in an embarrassing defeat in the House of Representatives. There were just 174 yes votes, punctuated by a staggering 38 Republican no votes.
“The Democrats just voted to shut down the government,” claimed Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, the vice president-elect. “They asked for closure and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
There was a third bill on Friday. And despite all the complaints, lawmakers eventually passed the law. There was no need to stick to “Plan Z” popularized in the “SpongeBob SquarePants” movie. The House of Representatives approved the bill earlier in the evening. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took the Senate floor late Friday evening.
“Democrats and Republicans just reached an agreement that will allow us to pass the CR before the midnight deadline tonight,” Schumer said.
Critics of the third bill might describe the entire process as a “railroad.” But it was a actually Railroad, which prevented the Senate from passing the bill on time. An unnamed Republican senator has held up Amtrak’s board nominees. But after senators resolved that issue, the Senate finally agreed with the House to prevent the shutdown on Saturday around 12:45 p.m. ET, 45 minutes after the midnight deadline.
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The shortened bill included disaster relief and emergency aid for farmers. But when it comes to appropriations, the Legislature simply extended all current appropriations to current levels. That was definitely it not a “Christmas tree”. It only kept the government running until March 14th. So there is no holiday crisis.
Merry Christmas.
But beware of the Ides of March.
