OBBB — A Procedural Lament

I was a government nerd in elementary school. My favorite film in school was the talking rolled-up piece of paper explaining how a “bill” became law.

That film has little resemblance to the process used to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). This is not a rant. This is not a critique of the substance inside the OBBB. It is just a melancholy observation that while watching the sausage get made was never pretty, right now our legislative process is just damn ugly.

I believe the age of grotesque, gargantuan grab-bag legislation began when the Democrats made a habit of not passing a budget through regular order, stuffed all spending into single take-it-or-leave-it continuing resolutions, and then dared Republicans to vote against it and shut down the government.

The next incarnations were again crafted by Democrats in the form of massive new spending bills. The classic of the genre was the Obamacare bill that we had to pass before we were allowed to read it.

And now Republicans have brought forth One Big Beautiful Bill, which they proudly claim to be the biggest, most grotesque, gargantuan grab-bag legislation in history.

My sixth-grade self was sold the notion that each individual piece of legislation would involve a single subject. That all members of Congress would have input, and that the resulting bill would represent the majority decision as to that single subject.

My sixth-grade self was convinced a member of Congress needed four skills. One, they had to be smart — quick studies who could shift from subject to subject. Two, they had to be eloquent, articulate, and persuasive in order to convince their colleagues to agree with them. Three, they had to be good listeners to hear all the collected wisdom from their colleagues. And finally, four, they had to be open to principled compromise. It takes a special talent to find a way to get people to agree.

In the age of thousand-page omnibus bills, none of the above seems to apply. The principal skills needed today are a nose-counting and negotiation. No one appears to be debating. No one tries to be persuasive. Everyone seems focused on bargaining or intimidating.

I was naive about a lot of things in sixth grade. As a cynical adult, I am certain bargaining and intimidation have been an important part of the legislative process since James Madison negotiated the Bill of Rights.

The heart of the problem is typified by this conversation that is as old as democracy. One legislator turns to his colleague and says — I’ll vote for what’s important to you if you vote for what is important to me. The most common variation of the conversation is — I’ll vote for your spending if you vote for my spending.

The problem, of course, is that these conversations, by design, tempt a legislator to vote Yes when her heart and mind say to vote No. The Yes vote is rationalized into the greater good. The problem is complicated by the fact that sometimes it might indeed be the Greater Good.

All legislation involves compromises. When the compromises revolve around a single subject, they are likely to be principled compromises. But, when a congressional majority approves extra special spending in Alaska solely to get an Alaskan senator’s vote for the grotesque gargantuan, neither the Alaskan senator nor the congressional majority is engaging in principled compromise.

Again, this note is not to criticize the OBBB nor the Alaskan senator specifically. This note presents no solution to the problem presented. This note insists, however, that it is a problem with real consequences. One, this trend, by design, freezes out the other side. All the compromising, negotiating, and bargaining is done intra-party. Even bipartisan ideas get a strictly partisan vote because those bipartisan ideas are intentionally linked to highly partisan ideas. The country is better served by a more inclusive process.

And two, and this can’t be proven, but I believe it to be true: this process is responsible for a 37 trillion dollar national debt. If all future spending were limited to only spending that a majority of Congress truly thought was appropriate (without negotiating and bargaining), our deficit problem just might be solved.

Historically, this process has been called "logrolling." OBBB takes logrolling to new heights. OBBB feels like winning. Procedurally, it is not.

G-Pub