Congress has been pretty busy recently. In the last six months, they have run for reelection and have spent at least $1.5 trillion attempting to reverse our nation’s economic decline. After they get back from this week’s recess, they are poised to finally finish a massive spending bill left over from last year.

Fresh off of passing one of the largest, most expensive bills in history, the House next week will take up a $410 billion omnibus spending bill. The legislation combines the nine remaining spending bills for fiscal 2009 that the Congress punted on before the election. These spending bills are necessary to keep the lights on and the government running through next year.

Before skipping town for the November elections, lawmakers had approved funding to run the Pentagon and the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. Now, they have to take care of the rest of the agencies.

Right now much of government is operating under temporary funding at last year’s levels. When lawmakers return Monday, they will have two weeks to pass the new spending before the temporary funding expires. Even though reports are that the bill is written, most lawmakers, and the public, have not seen it. We need to get back on the track of allowing everyone at least several days to read legislation before making lawmakers vote it up or down. And let’s face it, we’re already almost halfway through the fiscal year (started October 1st), so a few days here or there are not going to matter.

The omnibus will likely contain the thousands of earmarks that were stuffed into earlier drafts of spending bills – none of which ever made it to a floor vote in either chamber.  Taxpayers for Common Sense staff spent a lot of time last year tracking the earmarks in those 2009 spending bills. And the final bill will also likely contain hundreds if not thousands of new earmarks that almost no one has seen.

Just for example, some of the projects in the draft bills we expect to see retained in the final spending bill include $200,000 for streetscape improvement in Beaumont, Texas and $400,000 for construction of a recreation and fairgrounds area in Kotzebue, AK.

Now that Congress has gotten over the massive financial hump of passing the stimulus bill, the excuses to cut corners on transparency on these important pieces of legislation must end. A year ago, we stated that: “The nation would be far better served if Congress slowed down and allowed the bill to be scrutinized, evaluated and vetted before moving forward.” Nothing has changed. Let's spend the time to fully examine these spending bills. In fact, this could be the beginning of a new era: vet the FY09 spending bills , and consider, pass, and enact next year’s spending bills before the start of fiscal year 2010 in October.

We need to stop business as usual in Washington. Let’s start by putting the omnibus spending bill online. We agree with the calls to put legislation online as soon as possible, so taxpayers have time to review the legislation. As Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) declared, the public deserves “adequate time to read the measure and understand what is in it.”

That would be a good start.