How transparent is the process of packaging spending bills into an omnibus bill?

Question

Packaging all or a number of appropriation bills together creates what are called omnibus or minibus measures. These bills appropriate money to operate the federal government and make national policy in scores of areas. These omnibus bills grant large powers to a small number of people who put these packages together - party and committee leaders and top executive officials. Omnibus measures usually arouse the irk of the rank-and-file members of Congress because typically little time is available in the final days of a session to debate these massive measures or to know what is in them. Absent enactment of annual appropriation bills or a CR, federal agencies must shut down, furloughing their employees. Moreover, "uncertainty about final appropriations leads many [federal] managers to hoard funds; in some cases, hiring and purchasing stops.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_spending_bill

How transparent is the process of packaging spending bills into an omnibus bill? There's an article on this; however, nothing is indicated on how transparent the process of creating an omnibus bill to be passed to Congress to be voted up or down, making me think that the process is not transparent and as indicated above gives a lot of power to some people within the government of the United States? Is there any system put in place to make the whole process more transparent?

Answer 1

If by transparent you mean voted upon by a large number of members with a detailed knowledge of the comprehensive content of the bill relative to prior versions of it, and involving a large number of members in substantive negotiation, the answer is that the process is not very transparent.

This said, appropriations bills are initially crafted in committees (and appropriations subcommittees) that share lots of information and allow participation by a large number of interests members, and that provides ample opportunity for participation in their drafting. The appropriation committee drafted bills are the starting point for any omnibus bill, and the appropriations bills, in turn, are drafted within the framework of a previously adopted budget bill.

So, while the negotiations over the details that get tweaked to pass an omnibus bill are conducted in "back rooms" with little outside input, the larger thrust of the bills were the subject of a more open budget bill and appropriations committee process. The final negotiations are comparable to those in reconciling House and Senate versions of a bill in a conference committee. The negotiators identify what the political obstacles to getting a passing vote on the bill are, and find ways to make the holdouts happy is quietly as possible so as to void upsetting people who were involved in crafting the initial drafts.