21 trillion reasons to fix the budget process

In the wee hours of the morning last Friday, the Senate passed a 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion budget-busting spending bill barely 24 hours after it was introduced to the public. The bill provides funding for the 2018 fiscal year, which began six months ago. Members did not even have time to read and digest the bill, let alone debate and amend its provisions. Unfortunately, this unseemly process of dropping a take-it-or-leave-it spending bill right before the deadline is not an outlier; it has become the norm.

The current structure under the Congressional Budget Act, created in 1974, was designed...