Omnibus bills: definition, purpose, and legislative impact

Omnibus Bills

Normal Bill Passing Process

In the United States, several processes need to take place before a bill is passed into law. First, a member of House of Senate or House of Representatives needs to introduce a bill. After the introduction of the bill, the bill will be referred to a committee for further hearing and the committee will carefully study the bill. If the bill is very important, the committee may hold a public hearing on the bill and decide to pass the bill or reject it and no action will be taking on it. If the committee accepts the bill, the committee will read the bill in the open session of the House of Representative where the bill is passed to the Rules Committee. However, the Rules of Committee can either place the bill on the second reading for a debate or take no action on the bill. However, the bill is subject to debate at the second reading before the entire body, and the amendment is carried out. Then, the bill is placed for the third reading. (Oleszek,2007).

After being accepted in the first house, the bill goes through the same procedure at the second house. The upper house could make a necessary amendment, and when both houses accept the bill, the president signs the bill into law. On the other hand, the president may veto the bill and refuse to pass the bill into law. However, the bill may become law without a President's signature if the two-third majority of both houses pass a vote to override the president's decision. However, the strategy for passing omnibus bill into law is different from a normal law making process.

Strategy for passing an Omnibus Bill

The strategy behind passing an omnibus bill into law is to force members of congress to pass a vote for things that they might not want to vote individually. In some cases, some member of the congress might want a bill to become law while some group in the congress might disagree with the bill. For example, if the United States wants to fund a war and the other side in the congress can be forced to vote in favor of the issue they do not like, the issues they would not have supported under normal circumstances. In many cases, large size and scale of omnibus bills limit the opportunity for scrutiny and debate, which assists in passing a controversial amendment. Thus, omnibus bill is considered anti-democratic.

An Omnibus Bill is unique in Canada because its legislative process is different, government initiates tighter control over its debate. A famous omnibus bill was the Criminal Law Amendment Act, of 1969 that dealt with the issues of abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, gun control, drunk driving and gambling. In the United States, an example of Omnibus bill was the Omnibus Appropriate Act of 2009 of $410 billion that Obama signed into law. One of the benefits of an Omnibus bill is that it saves costs and time in passing a bill. In the United States, the congress often package unrelated issues into a bill and pass them into a single vote. Typically, legislatures pass different issues into a single vote using omnibus bills instead of pass the policy in a separate bill. "Legislators can make trade-o-s between several policy issues, and such trade-o-s usually increase efficiency." (Goertz, 2012 p 1). For example, the U.S. congress can package smaller appropriations bills into a large single bill and pass them into law with one vote. However, Omnibus is being criticized on the ground it does not provide necessary transparence and openness that a usually appropriate bill delivers.