How to fix the broken appropriations process? Televise it.

Once again, regular order has broken down on Capitol Hill.

A key constitutional responsibility of Congress, appropriating money, has become dysfunctional. 

{mosads}Part of the reason is that the government is now funded by continuing resolutions and omnibus spending packages. These resolutions and spending packages are the wrong way to govern, prevent progress from being made in cutting spending and are created largely through secret negotiations.

Those negotiations would make excellent television.

The way continuing resolutions and omnibuses are handled is a symptom of how the appropriations process in Washington is broken. Members of the House and Senate appropriations committees evade accountability by voice-voting bills which contain billions of dollars in federal spending.

Important spending bills, like the Labor/Health and Human Services/Education bills, don’t even get debated or voted on by either chamber.

The 12 spending bills continue to fail to be sent to the president’s desk following regular order by Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. Part of the result is the rise of the pernicious continuing resolutions and the mystery that surrounds their final assembly.

As Politico notes, a continuing resolution “gets written behind closed doors with input from the White House, but mostly in collaboration between the Democratic and GOP congressional leaders and House and Senate appropriations committees.”

These resolutions tell the Treasury to keep the federal government funded at current spending levels until a new spending package can be negotiated.

There are no committee hearings on the resolutions.

Congress is fond of them since they postpone difficult decisions. This year is the eighth in a row that the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution. When these resolutions come to the House and Senate floor for votes, members and senators cannot amend them. They can only vote “yes” or “no.”

This is a very opaque process that could be made more transparent through the magic of television.

The American taxpayers have a right to as much information as possible about how their money is being spent, and the deals being made with their tax dollars. They deserve to know what discussions take place concerning these resolutions.

Since there are no subcommittee or committee hearings, or extended debate on the bill since amendments are not permitted, then the discussions about continuing resolutions should be made in the public view.

That will allow Americans to make a more independent decision about the wisdom of a continuing resolution.

Much of the same reasoning applies to televising negotiations around omnibus spending bills, but with added emphasis. An omnibus spending bill is one that puts a number of individual spending bills into one bill.

While continuing resolutions can last a year, this has only happened twice. The average length of a continuing resolution since 1997 is 25 days.

An omnibus is far more ominous for the federal purse. Since fiscal year 1986 to fiscal year 2016, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports that “22 different omnibus measures were enacted for 19 different fiscal years. (Two separate omnibus appropriations acts were enacted for FY2001, FY2009, and FY2012.) The 22 omnibus appropriations acts covered a total of 170 regular appropriations acts. Each of the omnibus acts funded between two and 13 regular appropriations acts, on average funding almost eight (7.7) of them.”

CRS goes on to explain that omnibus spending bills can cause controversy because they are considered by Congress in compressed time schedules, legislative riders are included in omnibus spending bills, debate is truncated and amendments are prohibited.

Similar to continuing resolutions, omnibus spending measures rely heavily on staff negotiation with congressional leadership and the White House.

These omnibus spending bills suffer from a lack of sunlight. Televising the negotiations can help move them out of the darkness and into full view. Omnibus spending bills are famous for being filled with pork that isn’t voted on in final form by the Appropriations Committee, and can’t be removed by amendments on the House and Senate floors.

This is, by design, to allow politicians on Capitol Hill to move obnoxious omnibuses through Congress.

So televise the negotiations revolving around continuing resolutions and the omnibus. Let the public see and hear how staff, members, senators and executive branch officials get us deeper into debt, squander money on wasteful programs, and fail to make the tough decisions to cut programs.

Maybe that will help.

Siefring is director of government relations for FreedomWorks. His views are his own. Follow him on Twitter @NeilSiefring.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.