By now, you've all heard of conference committee: that magical land were a couple powerbrokers from the House and a couple poobahs from the Senate meet to decide what the final budget will look like. Yesterday, the representatives from both chambers were named. They are:

Senate: Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, and Patty Murray.

House: John Spratt, Allen Boyd, Paul Ryan, Rosa DeLauro, and Jeb Hensarling.

In both cases, you have the chairman and ranking member of the relevant budget committee. That means Conrad and Gregg in the Senate and Spratt and Ryan in the House. The others are appointed to the process.

First, a bit of background: Awhile ago, we talked about the three types of reconciliation possible on health care. The first type was a simple reconciliation process. The second type was a timed process where reconciliation would begin if the Congress didn't pass a bill by "X" date. And the third type was a threat to pass another budget at a later date that would include reconciliation.

Everything I'm hearing suggests that amendment 735, Mike Johanns effort "to prohibit the use of reconciliation in the Senate for climate change legislation involving a cap and trade system," will remain in the final legislation. It passed with 67 votes. More on reconciliation soon.

I elided this earlier, but what the Senate passed last night were not binding amendments. They were, in general, instructions to conferees. Put simply, the Senate is building its budget. The House is building its budget. Eventually, representatives from both bodies will have to go to conference and make the two budgets the same. When that happens, a lot of extraneous elements from both budgets will be thrown out. For that reason, amendments passed during this phase act as suggestions to those conferees. Which doesn't mean they're not worth ferreting out: Every passed amendment is saying that this is what the budget should look like. It may be the case that Henry Waxman refuses to play along. Or it may be the case that their instructions are heeded by the conferees.

Over Twitter, Ewstephe unearths a very weird amendment from last night. Roger Wicker submitted a change to the section of the budget that funds Amtrak. "None of amounts made available in the reserve fund authorized under this section may be used to provide financial assistance for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) unless Amtrak passengers are allowed to securely transport firearms in their checked baggage."

In other words, if I can't pack a rifle, Amtrak doesn't get funding. This was passed by the Senate in a voice vote.

A lot of weird stuff happens when the Senate opens for amendments to the budget. Take health care.

The Lewin Group "Staff Working Paper" examining the feasibility of combining the Baucus health care proposal with Ron Wyden Healthy Americans Act is, on first glance, a bit puzzling. For those interested, the paper concludes that harmonization is, indeed, feasible. But that's not a particularly interesting result.