The burdens of being an Informed Citizen are many. This weekend, you’ll probably be going out to some holiday party or dinner where your friends will expect you to have an opinion about the monster spending bill that’s been staggering through Congress.

Consider this an opinion primer.

The bill is called the cromnibus. That’s Congress-speak for continuing resolution and omnibus. You do not need to know about this. However, it is crucial that you avoid confusing the cromnibus with the cronut, a pastry that’s half-croissant and half-doughnut. “Like the cronut, but less delicious,” twittered Ashley Parker of The Times.

The worst thing in it is a section . dropped into the 1,600-page measure at the last minute without any hearings . that allows banks to use their customers’ federally guaranteed deposits to buy credit default swaps. Also other investments with impossible names that we learned to hate during the Wall Street bailout.

Most of the language in the section came directly from Citigroup. I rest my case.

The second-worst thing in the bill allows rich people to make up to $1.5 million in campaign contributions every two-year election cycle. Or $3 million if they happen to be a married couple. God knows how much if they happen to be a wealthy extended family.

Republican leaders suggested this was necessary in order to provide $12.6 million for pediatric cancer research. I am not even going to try to take you down the creative path that led to this connection. You don’t want to bring it up at a dinner party anyway because it will cause the other guests to start throwing food.

Let’s zero in on something simpler, like tired truck drivers.

Yes! The bill loosens the rules that currently limit drivers to 14 hours of work a day, 11 of which can be behind the wheel.

Already, I feel you getting worried, gentle reader. Yes, the person in that monstrous vehicle that’s passing you on the highway at what appears to be about 150 miles an hour may have been sitting there for 10-and-a-half hours, in a marathon he began after three hours of effort on the loading dock.

Last year, Congress reduced the maximum amount of time a driver could be on the road from 82 to 70 hours a week. Then, during the mandated rest period, said driver had to have two consecutive days during which the early morning hours of 1 to 5 a.m. were available for sleep.

“These new rules were adopted after a very thorough, time-consuming administrative process. In fact too time-consuming,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He leads a subcommittee on surface transportation that conducted multiple hearings on this very matter.

We’ve really hardly gotten started on the new rules. Yet here in good old cromnibus, there’s a provision returning to the old way of doing business.

The sponsor of the change is Susan Collins of Maine. We generally think of Collins as an extremely sympathetic figure, given that she’s possibly the entire Moderate Republican Caucus in the Senate.

She is also the sponsor of another controversial provision in the spending bill, which requires the Women, Infants and Children program to allow low-income pregnant women and mothers to buy white potatoes with their government food money. We had a long phone conversation about this matter, and I have to tell you that Collins is very forceful on this subject. Her bill is only about raw potatoes, not French fries or chips. And WIC will let you buy iceberg lettuce. And did you know that they subsidize potato purchases at farmers’ markets but not grocery stores? It’s way more complicated than you think.

As to the truck drivers, Collins thinks that instead of doing a study on how well the new rules work, we should go back to the old plan and study that. And, anyway, the 1 to 5 a.m. rule “pushes truck traffic into the early morning rush hour.” This is an excellent topic for dinner-table discussion. Would you rather share the highway with a truck whose driver has messed-up circadian rhythms or a truck that’s in front of you when you’re trying to get to work in the morning?

Meanwhile, during the Senate debate, a Democrat gave Collins particular credit for getting more money for mass transit and airport improvements. “It is a compromise piece of legislation,” Patty Murray of Washington reminded her colleagues.

True that. It’s been so long since we had any big compromises that we’ve forgotten how unappetizing they look. Is this one worth it, people? Would you trade better airport traffic control for fewer drivers who get overnight shut-eye? Would you kill off campaign finance reform to save the Obama immigration and health care programs? Let me know how the dining room votes.

And no matter what the result, that thing about the banks is really terrible. Worst. Holiday. Present. Ever.