Huge new spending law leaves huge unsolved problems, from health to infrastructure to DACA The one-and-done Congress ignored immigration, tariffs, infrastructure, health and harassment in a huge bill that may be the last thing they do for months.

Stan Collender | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Senate approves $1.3 trillion spending bill The Senate approved a $1.3 trillion measure boosting military and domestic spending which gives President Trump just part of the money he's wanted to build his wall with Mexico. Trump is expected to sign the measure before Saturday.

There still are seven months until the November elections, but it looks and sounds like Congress is done doing anything until at least then.

House and Senate Republican leaders have already said they don’t plan to comply with the law that requires Congress to adopt an annual budget resolution that lays out how money should be spent in fiscal year 2019 starting Oct. 1. The congressional schedule suggests there will be only about 60 mid-week days with actual votes before the midterms, so there’s not enough time to do next year’s appropriations bills that actually spend the money. And the GOP has decided not to try again to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

All this means that most legislative excitement likely won’t come until December, if it happens at all. That’s when lawmakers may be back for another government shutdown cliffhanger.

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On top of this pantheon of legislative sloth we have to add the $1.3 trillion, 2,200-page bill that President Trump signed last Friday. The bill was simply supposed to allocate spending across the government, but it was actually the Swiss Army knife of legislating because it did far more than that. It also included tax changes and revisions to a variety of laws that have nothing to do with appropriating money. It was one of the biggest legislative Christmas trees enacted in recent times. For the Trump administration and certain members of Congress, there were lots of presents under that tree.

In olden days, under normal rules, Congress would pass 12 separate spending bills to fund the government. This one, after two short shutdowns and other deadline dramas since the new fiscal year started Oct. 1, combined all dozen into one massive package to cover the next six months. It is very likely that no one in Congress or the Trump administration read the whole thing. It’s even more likely that they didn’t even try to read it both because there wasn’t much time — and because they really didn’t want to know everything that was in it.

The new way Congress works these days is particularly troubling when you realize what wasn’t included in this just-passed law that may be the only train leaving the station this year.

Nothing significant was said or done about reviving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young undocumented immigrants, even though hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance. The same was true on assault weapons and other major steps on guns, although the March for Our Lives was about to happen.

There was no attempt to debate the president’s trade tariffs that have already created massive volatility in financial markets and could trigger trade wars. And even as Congress grapples with the MeToo era and taxpayer-financed payouts to women wronged by members of Congress, there was nothing about sexual harassment. There also was no congressional alternative to the Trump infrastructure plan, even though it died a quick and ignominious death and supposedly there is bipartisan support for doing something in its place.

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Congress may not have been ready to make decisions on these matters. The problem is that the one-and-done process the House, Senate and White House are now using virtually guarantees no action the rest of this year. Unless there’s a crisis that is impossible to ignore, why would Congress take up the most controversial issues facing the U.S. and risk alienating voters on one side or the other in the months before Election Day?

The fact that the big spending bill was enacted so easily last week is the best indication that the return to “regular order” we’ve routinely been promised isn’t going to happen any time soon. Why would it? The new way of doing things provides an opportunity for Congress to do and avoid whatever it wants.

Depending on how old you are, you probably first learned about how Congress works from high school civics or Schoolhouse Rock (I'm Just A Bill) or How A Bill Becomes A Law, the pamphlet published long ago by the League of Women Voters.

Never mind. It’s time to forget all that.

Stan Collender, a former House and Senate Budget Committee staffer, teaches at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Follow him on Twitter: @thebudgetguy