This afternoon, the Senate Appropriations Committee released the list of FY 2008 discretionary spending caps allocated to each of its subcommittees of jurisdiction, under Budget Act section 302(b). The House Appropriations announced its own 302(b) allocations on June 5. The agreed-upon Budget Resolution set the overall discretionary cap for FY 2008 at $953.1 billion, $20 billion -- or two percent -- above President Bush's requests. The House and Senate sub-allocations are virtually identical. In no case do the two sets of allocations differ by more than a few hundred million dollars, except for Labor-HHS; the House calls for a $151.1 billion Labor-HHS cap and the Senate calls for $149.2 billion. The close parallel in 302 (b) allocations is intentionally designed to avoid protected conference committee negotiations.