“One thing we’ll need to do before we leave this year is fund the government because Democrats didn’t pass a single appropriations bill this year,” Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor in mid-November.  “Now they’ll try to mop up in the 11th hour with an omnibus spending bill that covers all of it. This is one more sign they aren’t learning many lessons from the election.”

Though McConnell and other Republicans have been highly critical of any Democratic attempt to increase government spending, the omnibus bill is expected to garner enough support to pass the upper chamber.  Unlike the continuing resolution in the House, which largely freezes discretionary spending at $1.09 trillion, the Senate’s budget extension will likely be more ambitious.

Senate Democrats are hoping to substitute a “more detailed” $1.1 trillion discretionary budget that includes about $18 billion dollars in additional funding and earmarks.

Exactly how the Senate will handle this budget crisis, and how food safety will ride the wave, is not clear.

As Politico’s David Rogers put it last week, the normal appropriations process has failed more than usual this year:  “Year-end budget crises have become almost routine in Washington, but the collapse of the process this year has reached a scale not seen before.”

Originally published on Food Safety News