I'm pretty late getting this up today, but the House of Representatives passed the FY 2010 budget resolution earlier this afternoon by a vote of 233-193. 17 Democrats voted against the resolution and not one Republican supported it. The vote also saw only 6 Blue Dog Democrats oppose the resolution out of the 51 members of that group. The Senate is currently debating the conference report agreement on the budget resolution and is expected to approve it later today.

Passage of this budget resolution has never been seriously in doubt. Given the majorities the Democrats enjoy in both the House and Senate, final passage was quite likely. But what has been interesting to watch is efforts of the House Blue Dog Coalition to make a push to re-enact statutory PAYGO rules in Congress rather than just the parliamentary rule that is in place. As I blogged about yesterday, House leaders were able to win the support of the Blue Dog coalition on the budget resolution by taking a more hard-line approach to PAYGO. Indeed, it appears they are getting serious. From CongressDaily:

To secure the support of the Blue Dogs, who have made statutory pay/go a priority, House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer sent a letter to budget conferees Tuesday stating the House would not consider four bills -- middle class tax cuts, the estate tax, patching the alternative middle class tax, and providing higher Medicare payments to physicians -- unless they were offset or included statutory pay/go.

Of course, it is one thing to say you are going to do something like follow PAYGO rules - and quite another to, you know, actually do it. We'll have to wait to see if this commitment will materialize later this year when Congress moves into crunch time on some of those issues or if this was just another bone thrown to the Blue Dogs.

Image by Flickr user outlier* used under a Creative Commons license.