Omnibus

The federal budget process is broken down into 12 appropriation bills each handling different areas such a defense, energy, agriculture and so on. Only four times in the past 50 years has congress completed this job. The other times they have pushed everything together and passed a temporary solution called the omnibus bill. The reason to break down the budget into parts is to have some control over where the money goes but by passing, the all together bill, allows for all sorts of mischief projects. One of the reasons that the bureaucracy has gained so much power is because congress cannot do its job. The fall back position is that every department gets what they got last year plus a little more and this opens the door to waste, abuse and fraud. If the omnibus approach is what the country will continue to use, then one way to get the budget under control is to say next years budget will have a cap of one percent less than the inflation rate. The congress can still have all of its wasteful spending but over time the budget will fall in line. Obama tried something like this when they agreed to cut defense as much as social programs in 2015. The bill passed but only lasted two years. The congressmen missed their pet projects that were used primarily to get reelected. .