Omnibus legislation is successful because it has everything. The incentive of the procedure is to make these bills very broadly palatable by giving both sets of party leadership whatever appropriations they want. And instead of considering each item as a separate bill or amendment, legislators are forced to do one up or down vote on the whole thing. They don't know what all's in there, but they certainly know about the headline items whose failure could get them tossed out of office.
Ultimately earmarks have limited liquidity and it take multiple levels of trading to create the proper mix of earmarks. That is why the package has five thousand pages. Pelosi carries around a humongous catalog of earmarks, 'the 'book'. She is the earmark book maker.
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