The $390 billion federal spending package passed by the Senate late last week is called an omnibus because it combines what should be 11 discrete spending bills into one. Better to call it an SUV – it’s bigger than it needs to be, it’s not terribly efficient, but – unlike the 11 separate bills – at least it’s moving.

This, one bill funding 11 separate departments, is what one Congress gets when the previous Congress chooses pre-election posturing and gridlock over thoughtful debate and legislating. The flaws in the bill, or at least the points of valid argument, are many: Perhaps it does spend too much on defense, combating global terrorism and tax cuts and not enough on domestic programs. No one can argue, however, that the passage of this bill by a bipartisan vote of 69 to 29, with the provisions it contains and without billions in proposed add-ons, is a political victory for President Bush. Its swift and orderly passage also is a victory for new Majority Leader Bill Frist, who insisted the Senate cancel its traditional January recess to finish it.

The bill does not, despite the claims of some Democrats, many of whom voted for it, gut domestic spending. Federal aid to education increases by more than 10 percent, there is more money for drought-stricken farmers, for a modest increase in Medicare reimbursements and for states harmed by the economic downturn and homeland security demands. Not enough, perhaps, but more. The almost across-the-board 2.9 percent cuts in domestic programs will only cause, as critics contend, 1,175 FBI agents to lose their jobs and 224,000 women and children to do without proper nutrition if that is how the heads of those agencies choose to balance their budgets.

They won’t. Besides, how many FBI agents, women and children would be spared if the omnibus did not include last-minute riders for such things as orangutans, Alaskan seafood, Louisiana oysters and a new office for Sen. Robert Byrd? The true test of the objecting senators’ sincerity will come when the Senate version is reconciled with the more frugal House version and $500 million may be cut to meet President Bush’s $389.5 billion cap.

This, of course, is no way to legislate, but the Senate did get one thing exactly right. One of the most troubling and controversial ideas to come out of the anti-terrorism effort is the Pentagon surveillance program called Total Information Awareness. TIA, run by former national security advisor and convicted Iran-Contra liar John Poindexter, will develop technologies to sift through databases and computer networks to identify threatening patterns of activity in everyday transactions such as travel reservations and credit card purchases, a prospect that has united liberals and conservatives (moderates, too) in concerns about the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. Without debate and with unanimous consent, the senators placed strict curbs on TIA, tough accountability rules and a condition that any domestic intelligence gathering have explicit congressional approval. Just as SUVs have been found prone to tipping over, the Senate found in TIA a false sense of security.