On January 4th, the Senate introduced S. 10, the Restoring Fiscal Discipline Act of 2007. The act lets any Senator raise a point of order in the Senate that, much like the new House rule, bars consideration of deficit-increasing tax and mandatory spending legislation. The point of order could be overruled by a 3/5th majority, or 60 votes.

Tomorrow, the U.S. House is expected to reinstate PAYGO budgeting rules -- with teeth. Under the House rule, any bill, joint resolution, amendment, or conference report affecting direct spending and revenues have the net effect of increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus for either the period comprising the current fiscal year and the five or ten following fiscal years will be out of order. We have wondered and worried how that would square with House Ways & Means chair Charlie Rangel's imperative, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), among other policy priorities.

Yesterday in this space, we asked: [A]s we await the President's submission of another emergency supplemental war funding request... will President Bush comply with or ignore ... the Defense Authorization Act of 2007, for fiscal year 2007 (PL 109-364), [in which] Congress directed that [the President's] budget for fiscal year 2008 include full funding of the costs of ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? We didn't have long to wait to find out.