Word: omnibus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After months of balancing every member's special interest, the House and Senate succeeded last week in producing an omnibus trade bill designed to rein in the ballooning $170 billion trade deficit...
...relief among many Democrats was palpable. Senators appreciate Byrd for his obsessive attention to their personal needs, but little else. Increasingly, he has seemed unable to control his flock. None of the Government's 13 appropriations bills came to a vote last year, forcing the adoption of an omnibus spending bill whose full content was not known to a single Senator; in February, Byrd's own campaign- finance bill could not make it through the Senate. Moreover, with his silver- ^ blue pompadour and dour expression, Byrd, 70, has proved no match as an adversary to Ronald Reagan's polished role...
Talk about spoiling the broth. Imagine trying to prepare dinner with 199 cooks watching every move. Something like that is happening on Capitol Hill, where a mammoth conference committee is trying to reconcile differences in the omnibus trade bills passed last year by the House and Senate. Under the direction of two Democratic leaders -- Representative Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas -- the 199 members of the committee, along with 300 or so staffers and 100 briefcase carriers sent over by the White House, have been meeting in 17 subgroups in an all-out effort...
...omnibus appropriations package is too wasteful, the president can pick out the most superfluous expenditures and veto the entire bill because of them. Then he could promise to sign the same bill into law, as long as the offensive appropriations were excluded...
...Reagan's rhetoric about how Congress has stuffed omnibus spending packages--charges that often ring true--the president has signed the giant omnibus packages and vetoed only a handful of smaller appropriations bills. The result has been enormous budget deficits...