Congressional leaders are again bullying rank-and-file members into passing a massive funding package under the threat of a government shutdown. The new omnibus spending bill is merely the latest evidence that Congress's dismal 22 percent approval rating is well deserved. The Democratic majorities in both chambers spent much of the year accomplishing very little – not even passing a budget resolution as required by law. They failed to enact a single appropriations bill by the October 1 fiscal new year, and failed to bring to the floor even popular bills such as the Electoral Count Act. The Senate held just 137 recorded votes related to legislation in the first 50 weeks of the year. In an earlier era, 137 votes would have constituted a productive week.

Conservatives may hail an unproductive Congress as evidence that lawmakers are resisting the urge to spend and regulate. But unfortunately, they'd be wrong: Congress was saving up for a year-end spending spree. In what has become a Christmas tradition, House and Senate leaders waited until the last minute and then stapled together 35 separate bills into a $2 trillion omnibus spending bill. Rank-and-file lawmakers have been duly warned that there is not enough time for them to read and absorb the contents of the mammoth 4,155-page bill (plus the 2,600 pages of explanatory statements that further define the spending). Nor may they be allowed to offer any changes or amendments to the package. After all, parts of the government are only days from shutting down, the 117th Congress is about to adjourn, and most importantly, no one wants to be in Washington, D.C., come Christmas.

This deadline preventing lawmakers from reading and amending the year's most important bill is a feature, not a bug. Any of these proposals could have been analyzed, debated, and amended at any point in the past year. In fact, the appropriations bills were supposed to be enacted months ago. Legislative leaders purposely delayed the negotiations and kept rank-and-file lawmakers in the dark so that they could jam through the massive omnibus at the last minute, knowing that no one would want to be blamed for the chaos of a government shutdown over the holidays.

This is not a partisan issue. These last-minute omnibus bills have become commonplace over the past several decades in Democrat- and Republican-controlled Congresses alike. Nor is the filibuster the issue, as many of the bills folded into the omnibus either could have passed with bipartisan majorities or had been bogged down in intra-party fissures. Instead, the omnibus is meant to bully lawmakers into passing unpopular bills by attaching them to must-pass bills under the threat of a shutdown. Do you want to fund America's military or help Ukraine? You must also vote for 4,000 earmarks. Do you support veterans' health care or helping victims of domestic abuse? You must also vote for a historic spending spree. No matter which way a lawmaker votes, the negative political ads will write themselves. We saw this last year, when President Biden blasted Republicans as soft on Russia for voting against an omnibus bill that funded Ukraine because the bulk of the bill was a monumental liberal spending spree.

Back when I was Senator Rob Portman's chief economist, I always advised that he vote against omnibus bills because no one could be sure what awful policies would be discovered in them later. In 2014, bill writers buried in the omnibus bill a pension change that would have devastated 40,000 Ohioans. We discovered it shortly before the vote, and Sen. Portman's no vote became one of the leading drivers of his 18-point landslide reelection in 2016.

The new legislation spends way too much. The $1.7 trillion bill includes a 9.3 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending – on top of last year's 8.4 percent expansion. By permanently raising the baseline, this historic two-year spending binge will hike such spending by nearly $2 trillion over the next decade.

Remember the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) law that requires new tax cuts and entitlement expansions to be offset? President Obama signed the law in 2009, and Democratic leaders have repeatedly bragged about their willingness to follow it. Yet, after the Democrats enacted the $1.9 trillion America Rescue Plan and other new expansions, this omnibus bill will cancel PAYGO's automatic spending cuts, essentially letting Democrats avoid the consequences of failing to keep their own fiscal-responsibility promises.

The bill's 4,000 earmarks also reflect the swampy bipartisan consensus that pork-barrel projects should be brought back as a standard tool in the legislator's arsenal. Among other such projects, the bill would allocate $1.5 million to encourage people to eat outdoors in Pasadena, Calif., and $3.6 million to build the Michelle Obama Trail in Georgia. (The problem truly is bipartisan: The incoming Republican House majority recently voted overwhelmingly to continue earmarking when it assumes control in January.)

In any bill this extensive, there will be positives. The bipartisan Electoral Count Act, which made it into the bill, is needed to ensure a smoother election transition in 2024. Assisting Ukraine's war against Russia will likely save defense spending in the long run if it prevents an emboldened Russia from running roughshod over Eastern Europe.

Still, Republicans are set to seize the House majority in two weeks, so there is little reason to rush through a budget-busting Democratic spending bill that will govern Washington through at least next September (and likely longer given the tendency to pass extensions). Congress should extend the current spending levels for another month, and then return to regular order. This includes separating out the non-spending bills for stand-alone votes, and paring back the Pelosi/Schumer spending spree. A post-election survey showed that the top priority for Republican voters last month was reining in inflation, spending, and deficits. Now, Republicans must deliver.

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.