This morning’s Senate Budget Committee’s markup session on Judd Gregg’s (R-NH) Stop Over-Spending Act of 2006 saw more Republican hand wringing over the budget deficit, but not much more. Republican senators took turns this morning bemoaning the level of federal expenditures and how that spending has crated the huge deficits we now face.

Tomorrow the Senate Budget Committee will be marking up the Legislative Line Item Veto Act. On June 15, the House Rules Committee approved legislation (H.R. 4890) that would give line-item veto power to President Bush, in an 8-4 party-line vote.

Picture this, if you will: A hurricane levels your house and you have to move into an apartment while your home is repaired. You are also a reasonable, sane, and mathematically competent homeowner who can budget living expenses appropriately. When you created your budget that year that the hurricane destroyed your home, you (rightfully) did not include in your budget a line-item for mortgage payments and rent. Let’s also imagine that you’ve had problems getting your home repaired due to unexpected problems with your contractor, various building codes, material shortages, etc.

After reporting yesterday that the House and Senate had yet to reach a compromise on the supplemental spending bill, they did in fact reach one last night. The $94.5 billion bill to fund the military and hurricane relief also sets the budget spending cap for the Senate at $873 billion (the Senate, remember, had orignally passed a budget resolution allocating $16 billion more in funding, mostly for human needs programs). A number of Senators wanted to boost the cap to $880 billion, but were unable to do so because of resistance from the White House and the House leadership.