If you found Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad's comments on the Budget Resolution quoted in our blog yesterday inscrutable, you are not alone. Policy wonks, journalists, lobbyists, industry groups, and aides have spent much of the past two days trying to interpret the meaning of Conrad's promise, "no tax rate increases," given his broader promise of balancing the budget by 2012. So we offer an abridged Conrad Lexicon, to assist in parsing the delphic utterance:

Coming to a chamber floor near you! CQ($): The House Appropriations Committee has set a "target date" of March 7 to mark up the fiscal 2007 supplemental measure, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the committee chairman, said Wednesday. The goal is to bring the bill to the floor the following week. The Senate Appropriations Committee intends to mark up its own version of the bill March 20, according to its chairman, Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he would like to have the bill on the floor the last week of March. Last week of March - mark your calendars.

The broad outlines of the Democrats' FY 2008 Budget Resolution strategy are beginning to emerge. This much is now clear, per comments this week by House and Senate Budget Committee chairs Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND):

• the BR will set total discretionary spending above the $929.8 billion cap proposed by President Bush
• it will provide for a balanced buget by FY 2012, by increasing revenues "without any tax rate increases"; instead, it will "broaden the base and keep rates low"

SCHIP, a federal health insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women, has been making news lately (CQ ($) has a good article on it). Here's a quick rundown of what's been happening: