WASHINGTON — President Trump insisted he will never again sign a huge catchall spending measure of the sort he just grudgingly approved to fund the government. But he will probably have little choice if he wants to keep the government open in the future.
The steady deterioration of the congressional appropriations process makes it extremely unlikely that this president, or any future president, will ever receive the annual spending bills the old-fashioned way — one or two at a time with the opportunity to reconcile policy disputes with Congress without shutting down the entire government.
Given the current state of political warfare and congressional dysfunction, the too-big-to-veto omnibus bill seems here to stay, absent some momentous change in culture and process.
“There is no way around it,” acknowledged Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania and a veteran member of the House Appropriations Committee.
One main reason for the pessimistic outlook is that the Senate, for various political and logistical reasons, has essentially given up on the time-honored method of considering individual spending bills on the floor after they have been hashed out in committee.
