House conservatives are balking at the term “minibus” being used to describe the $1.2 trillion government funding bill congressional leaders unveiled in the early hours of Thursday morning.
“It’s not too ‘mini,’ is it?” Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital. “A ‘mini’ today is much different than a ‘mini’ five years ago. … Certainly, it’s smaller than an omnibus.”
A “minibus” is the colloquial term on Capitol Hill for a spending package that combines several of Congress’ annual 12 government appropriations bills. It comes from the term “omnibus” being used when all 12 bills are rolled into a single massive spending package, plus the inclusion of unrelated priorities.
“Omnibus” spending bills are opposed by large swaths of the GOP, and some Democrats, for being too broad and lacking the transparency that smaller funding packages would have. That’s why congressional leaders divided them into two packages of six and have touted wins in keeping those packages largely free of irrelevant priorities.
The first package, roughly amounting to $460 billion, passed the House and Senate earlier this month. But opponents of the bipartisan deal are claiming the entire deal is just an omnibus split in two.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a member of the House Freedom Caucus, agreed when asked if the term “minibus” was misleading.
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“Once you glue it together with the last one, you’ve got an omnibus. The first shoe of the omnibus fell last week. This is the second shoe falling this week,” Biggs told Fox News Digital.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., generally has not referred to the deal as a “minibus,” referring to it normally as a spending agreement or the appropriations process. But the term has been widely used by lawmakers and the media despite the package accounting for roughly 70% of discretionary federal government spending.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, posted several times to X, calling the deal a “swamp omnibus” and “an embarrassment.”
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The $1.2 trillion spending bill includes funding for defense, the Department of Homeland Security, education and the legislative branch, among other offices.
“It doesn’t matter what you call it. … If you have a bad process, you end up with a bad product. And that’s what we’ve had,” Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital.
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