It took five months for the $1.5 trillion federal appropriations bill to surface after the United States’ fiscal year began Oct. 1, but only hours for the U.S. House—and less than a day for the U.S. Senate—to adopt it on March 9 and 10. The massive omnibus package is a continuing resolution, not a budget, as Congress has not adopted an annual budget since 2016. It includes a $46 billion increase or 6.7 percent boost for non-defense programs, a $42 billion, 5.6 percent increase in defense allocations, and $13.6 billion in supplemental appropriations to aid Ukraine. But no one read the entire 2,741-page bill within the 24-hour span that it was introduced and adopted, at least not all of it, at least not those who voted on it, says Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of Chicago-based OpenTheBooks.com. “Do we have a representative republic if our representatives don’t know what they …
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