Talk:Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021

United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act

I'm confused. The first sentence of the article links to H.R. 133, but the website says that is the "United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act". Nog642 (talk) 06:29, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I googled and I found this 5000 page PDF that refers to it as H.R. 133. My guess is they took an old bill, gutted it, and re-named it. I'm not sure why. Anybody know why? Once we figure out why, we may want to put an explanatory note about it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:36, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

My guess is that they are using it as a shell bill, the same way they did for the CARES Act. JEN9841 (talk) 07:59, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

JEN9841. I talked to a congressional staffer today. You're correct. It's a shell bill. I'll make a couple of edits to this article and to shell bill to reflect what I learned. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:39, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Novem_Linguae: Cool, just keep in mind Wikipedia:No original research. JEN9841 (talk) 00:05, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

If the statement is controversial, I'm sure somebody will delete it, or edit it, or add a cite to it. Gotta get it in and start the process though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:17, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The correct term is legislative vehicle. I believe a shell bill is a somewhat different but related concept, where the original bill was written without any substantial language, and was never intended to pass. In this case, the original bill was intended to pass but was abandoned. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 07:50, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

You're right. I had the terms mixed up. Thanks for pointing this out. I cleaned up my edits to shell bill. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:21, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Good summary document

This 30 page house.gov summary of the bill may end up being a good summary document, for any editors that want to expand the article. The metadata says it was created on Dec 21, so hopefully it accurately reflects what was passed today. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:41, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I plan to add a "Not Included" section

This article should cover what happened with all the ideas and controversial issues that were raised during the lead-up of this bill. I assume the below items did not make it into the final bill, but I am not sure. Does anybody know and/or have sources? Conversely, if these items were included, we should mention them elsewhere in the article.

== Not included ==
The following issues were considered and resulted in news coverage, but were not included in the final version of the bill.

* Republicans wanted to include a COVID liability shield for businesses.
* Democrats wanted to include COVID stimulus funds for local and state governments. Only funding for schools was included in the final bill.
* Senators [[Bernie Sanders]] (I-VT) and [[Josh Hawley]] (R-MO) wanted $1200 COVID stimulus checks, instead of $600.
* Senator [[Pat Toomey]] (R-PA) wanted to reduce the [[Federal Reserve]]'s emergency lending powers, which were expanded under the [[CARES Act]].

–Novem Linguae (talk) 16:23, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Ideally I would think we should include a section/sub-section on negotiations leading up to the bill, and so maybe this content could be included as part of that. JEN9841 (talk) 18:12, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Good idea. If I add this section, feel free to rename it to "Negotiations" and edit it as you wish. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I had the impression that the first two items, Confederate names and Section 230, were issues around the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, not this bill. Wasted Time R (talk)

You're right. I'll delete those two items from my wikicode above. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Very good idea to include a summary of negotiations and the key sticking points, including what was proposed but ended up being excluded. Neutrality^talk 03:08, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

This recent edit covers the last two bullets. Now all that's left to work in is the first two bullets, if applicable. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:07, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Health care provisions

https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/patient-support-advocacy/congress-provides-relief-medicare-payment-passes-surprise

https://about.bgov.com/news/health-care-briefing-surprise-billing-to-ride-on-omnibus-bill/

See the links above. Any way we can summarize these in a readable way? This stuff is pretty important, but also pretty technical. Neutrality^talk 03:09, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Fox and Friends

Fox News's morning program Fox & Friends criticized the bill's large number of unexpected items that were not directly related to government funding or pandemic relief.[11] Should this Fox & Friends quote stay in? Fox News opinion shows are not a reliable source. Yeah we can quote and attribute, but is it adding value to that section of the article? I'm leaning no, but eager to hear other thoughts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:27, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

If you want to know why the current leader of the free world suddenly makes some kind of pronouncement, it can often be traced back to what was on Fox and Friends earlier that day. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:27, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Wrong link to HR 133

The links (in at least two places) to HR 133 point to the wrong bill — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.39.120 (talk) 19:44, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Hey there. Thanks for your comment. HR 133 used to be a different bill, but Congress cut out all the old text and put in new text, using it as a legislative vehicle. It will take a few days for their website to be updated to reflect the new bill name and text. The link should stay the same though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:54, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.39.120 (talk) 21:15, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Anonymous sources

One top Republican congressional staffer was quoted anonymously as saying the situation was a "complete clusterf---".[54] Are anonymous sources mentioned in a reliable source, reliable? The closest policy I could find that mentions it is WP:RSBREAKING, which doesn't clearly ban them, but speaks negatively of them. The On the Media Breaking News Consumer's Handbook[17] contains several suggestions to avoid spreading unreliable and false information, such as distrusting anonymous sources and unconfirmed reports. I am leaning toward removing the anonymous source above. Thoughts? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:50, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Given the circumstances, I have no doubt that a good number of Republican staffers on the Hill are thinking exactly this. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:28, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 20:09, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that at 5,593 pages, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 is the longest bill ever passed by the U.S. Congress, but members of both parties complained they had almost no time to read it?

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Fujiyama Mama
• Comment: There have been a lot of contributors to this article. I've listed the top eight contributors, with the original creator first followed by the others in rough authorship/added text/number of edits order.

Created by JEN9841 (talk), UpdateNerd (talk), Neutrality (talk), Novem Linguae (talk), Wasted Time R (talk), Antony-22 (talk), Oathed (talk), and JaredDLarsen (talk). Nominated by Wasted Time R (talk) at 00:47, 28 December 2020 (UTC).

• The proposed hook seems long and also unduly negative. I would prefer ALT 1: ... that at 5,593 pages, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 is the longest bill ever passed by the U.S. Congress? Neutrality^talk 16:24, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

ALT0 is under the 200 character limit in terms of hook length. I think ALT1 is on the dull side whereas ALT0 has some edginess/hook interest to it. Yes, ALT0 is negative, in the sense that Congress has become completely dysfunctional in terms of its appropriations processes. But pretty much everyone, including members from both parties, agrees that it is dysfunctional, so I do not believe it is unduly negative. And it is not aimed at any particular person or persons, so the BLP requirements for hooks are not violated. All that said, I can live with ALT1 if that's what the reviewer and promoter think best. There are other hooks that could be devised as well, and you are welcome to suggest some. Note that at the time I nominated this, the DYK clock had just ticked into the seventh day and I didn't know if the bill would even be signed or not, so I went with something that would still be true either way. Wasted Time R (talk) 17:17, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

"Longest ever" seems interesting enough to me; I would like to stay away from "edgy." I do not disagree with your point about the dysfunction, but most appropriations bills are not meant to be read cover-to-cover in the style of a novel, this bill was extensively negotiated over a series of weeks, and it also passed with a veto-proof majority. The selection of the "no time to read" complaints (as opposed to any of the other facts) does not seem quite fair to me. I would just stick to the length fact and let the reader click the article to learn more. Neutrality^talk 17:28, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Neutrality's concern. Each chamber usually passes their appropriations bills in the summer. By the time the two chambers try to reconcile the passed bills into the omnibus, the appropriations parts have already been read, debated, and vetted. If we keep the part about not having enough time to read it, I think some investigation should be done to make sure that there is a consensus in reliable sources that this is true. It might be a minority viewpoint. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:50, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

I prefer ALT1 for the reasons stated, but particularly those of Novem. JEN9841 (talk) 15:21, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

• This article is new enough and long enough. The hook facts are cited inline, the article is neutral and I detected no copyright issues. Either hook could be used, but I prefer ALT1. A QPQ has been done. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:37, 5 January 2021 (UTC)