Omnibus bill

Imagine you have a bunch of toys in a big toy box. Some of the toys are for playing outside, some are for playing inside, and some are for playing with friends.

Now imagine someone comes along and wants to buy all your toys, but they only want to make one purchase. That means they have to put all the toys they want to buy into one big box called an “omnibus”—which just means “all in one.”

In government, an omnibus bill is kind of like that. It’s a big bill that has a lot of different things in it, like a bunch of smaller bills that have been put all together into one big bill.

The government does this to save time and try to make passing laws easier. Instead of having to debate and pass lots of individual bills, they can just debate and pass one big bill that has lots of things in it.

Just like your toy box, some of the things in the omnibus bill might be related to each other, and some might not be related at all. Sometimes people disagree about what should be included in the bill and what should be left out, which can make it a bit complicated.

But for the most part, the idea of the omnibus bill is to put all the toys (laws) in one big box (bill), so everyone can decide if they want to buy them all at once.