&gt; The idea that a government would give itself permission to spend massive amounts of money isn&#x27;t news.<p>That <i>any</i> regular budget (rather than a short-term CR) was passed by the Congress to be signed by the President is news.<p>&gt; The tucking of unrelated legislation into the budget however, is news, especially since it had been vehemently opposed over and over in every previous version.<p>Policy riders on budgets aren&#x27;t actually unusual (people complain about them all the time, but that&#x27;s not because they are uncommon), except in the sense that actual full budgets in the US are unusual.<p>&gt; Guess which part is reported in detail.<p>Mostly, process and reaction and commentary from those involved; there&#x27;s a lot of detail on that, but both the spending provisions <i>and</i> the policy riders, while covered, are given only extremely brief summaries.