Via Ezra Klein, take a look at this post by Sarah Binder at The Monkey Cage that explains reconciliation in plain English.

Sarah's explanation is worth reading, but that's not what made my day.  This picture of Sarah holding an "I Won A 2002 Budget Battle" coffee mug and the fact that she used her many wins in a budget trivia contest I created as the reason we should have confidence in her analysis is what made my world seem just a little brighter.

Here's the back story.

I started the budget trivia contest when I was writing the weekly column "Budget Battles" for nationaljournal.com (That stopped about three years ago; I now proudly write the weekly column "Fiscal Fitness" for Roll Call).  Troy Schneider, who was my editor at NJ and is one of the founders of Capital Gains and Games, strongly encouraged me to do it.  In fact, Troy even convinced the powers-that-be at National Journal to pay for the "I Won A Budget Battle" pennants, tee shirts, mouse pads, and coffee mugs we gave away to the winners.  The contest stopped about a year or so before I left NJ because, honestly, it was becoming too hard to come up with a new question every week.  In fact, it often took me as long to come up with the question as it did to write the column.

This was way before blogging became popular, or even technically feasible, so the contest was a way to encourage readers to communicate with me.  Some weeks we received more than 100 responses.  It helped make my column into one of nj's best-read online features.

There were many multiple winners, but I don't recall anyone winning as often as Sarah.  Unfortunately, I don't remember and have no way to retrieve any of her winning responses so I don't know whether she mostly submitted answers for the factual (By what day is the president required to submit a budget to Congress?) or the creative questions (What's a good name for a federal budget-oriented sporting event?).

FYI...The answer to the first question is "the first Monday in February."  The winning answer to the second question was "The U.S. Open Wallet."

For old times sake, here's a question for you to answer.  It was the first question I ever asked in the contest.  The winner, who will be selected at random from all those who submit the correct response by midnight, January 27, 2010, EST, will receive a Starbucks gift card.

The question:

"Who was the first chairman of the House Budget Committee?"

Good luck, and thanks Sarah.