In the first legislative act of the 110th Congress, the House adopted an initial set of "honest leadership" rules changes yesterday by a vote of 430-1. A floor vote on a second set of rules changes, covering "civility and fiscal responsibility," is expected today. Yesterday's package of rules changes provides the following:

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.

“Bush Says Plan Would Balance Budget by ’12,” an article in yesterday's New York Times, includes this sorry sentence: “During his re-election campaign in 2004, Mr. Bush promised to cut the deficit in half by 2009. Though the prediction was greeted with widespread skepticism, that goal now looks increasingly plausible.” Indeed, that prediction was met with widespread skepticism, but not because it seemed implausible. As we have noted, President Bush and OMB inflate deficit forecasts in order to claim victory when actual deficit numbers turn out to be smaller.

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, ($) President Bush sketched out some broad themes and a few bold claims for the final two years of his presidency. Many in the media have commented on Bush's call to cut earmarks in half this year, but I wanted to highlight a small part of the op-ed that has been overlooked. Bush wrote: Because revenues have grown and we've done a better job of holding the line on domestic spending, we met our goal of cutting the deficit in half three years ahead of schedule. By continuing these policies, we can balance the federal budget by 2012 while funding our priorities and making the tax cuts permanent. (emphasis added) I'll ignore for the moment Bush's continued misleading claims about cutting the deficit in half and how really insignificant that will be in the long run. I'm more concerned that Bush believes we have funded and will continued to be able to fully fund our most crucial priorities. The president is still under the false impression we can tackle difficult challenges without anyone having to sacrifice.