POLITICO – Call it the Return of the Jedi or the prodigal son. But the giant omnibus spending bill heading to the House and Senate floors looms largest for the Appropriations Committees after years of being kicked to the curb by party leaders and ignored by a feckless White House.
The final product, totaling $1.1 trillion and filling hundreds of pages, surely contains its flaws and short-sightedness. But it is by far the biggest bipartisan deal written by a committee of Congress — and not in leadership offices — that Washington has seen in some time.
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Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was almost bubbly coming out of a meeting Monday night of Senate Republicans on the Appropriations panel. Staff looked exhausted, having worked in some cases six weeks straight but for Christmas Day. Even the ever-cautious Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican, broke into a smile.
“If the House comes with a big vote, we’ll get a big vote, too,” Shelby said, after urging his GOP colleagues to stand with him and Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) for the bill. “It’s not everything anybody wanted, but we’ve been working hard at it and it will lead us, hopefully, to regular order.”
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