Despite its $1.7 trillion price tag — including a whopping $860 billion earmarked for the military — the omnibus budget bill enacted late last month has not received the scrutiny it deserves.

One reason is there wasn’t much time to examine the bill’s contents. The legislation is made up of twelve “regular” and two supplemental appropriations bills that fund federal activities for the rest of fiscal year 2023. Democratic and Republican leaders unveiled the bill’s four-thousand-plus pages on December 19 — giving the measure just eleven days to be debated, amended, passed, and signed into law to prevent a government shutdown. It was a legislative fire drill.

Another factor was that criticism of the bill overwhelmingly came from the Right. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the only lawmaker in the Democratic caucus — in either the House or Senate — to vote against it. There should have been many more.