In a press conference yesterday, incoming House Speak Nancy Pelosi re-affirmed her commitment to key budget process reforms long-supported by OMB Watch. Among the "First 100 Hours" rules package will be the following reforms:

• EARMARKS: mandatory disclosure of all earmarks and the requirement that members certify that spouses do not directly benefit from the added project
• DEFICIT DISCIPLINE: budget Reconciliations will not be considered if they reduce the budget surplus or increase the deficit
• PAYGO: re-instatement of pay-as-you-go budget rules, requiring that new tax cuts or entitlement spending be offset with corresponding spending cuts

We applaud Pelosi's commitment to this bold and admirable agenda and will hold her to her own high standards, which she enunciated at the press conference: [N]o new deficit spending ... that will be part of the rules of the House, and we'll also introduce it as a statute, so, hopefully, it will be part of the full budget process. Now, we turn to the devil in the detaills, such as how earmarks are defined, how easy or difficult it will be to override PAYGO provisions, how 'emergency' supplmental funding requests will fit into the picture, among others.