There's a legislative oak tree poised to spring from the ACORN funding ban the House passed on Thursday.

The measure would deny all forms of federal funding to any organization that has made a fraudulent filing with either a federal or state regulatory agency. Rather than focusing solely on ACORN, an umbrella group for a variety of community organizations, the legislation instead could affect a wide range of corporations and nonprofits, from defense contractors and drug companies, to financial institutions and charities. The affected organization may not even have to have been convicted in a court.

While Republican aides were aware of the scope of the provision, it's not clear that many members of either party knew they were voting for such a broad policy in adding the "Defund ACORN Act" to a student loan bill.

"This amendment is more than just a mechanism to de-fund ACORN, it's a clear declaration that misuse of taxpayer dollars will no longer be tolerated," said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The ban on federal funding for ACORN adopted by the House Thursday almost certainly would have been ruled out of order -- if Democrats had cared to stand in the way.

The Republican-written amendment exceeded the jurisdiction of the committee that wrote the bill and had nothing to do with the legislation at hand, giving ample opportunity for any Democrat to raise a point of order against it because it was not germane to the underlying student-loan bill.

Some Republicans expected Democrats to object and kill the "motion to recommit" that triggered the amendment. But none did. Instead, the whole House voted, 345-75, to prevent the beleaguered catchall community-organizing outfit from getting federal funding.

So even the 75 Democrats who voted with ACORN already had silently assented to the federal-funding ban. After these videos surfaced, it's not hard to understand why.

Everyone in Washington loves to wave around a Congressional Budget Office estimate as unimpeachable proof of an argument.

That's been as much the case with the health care bills moving through the Congress as any legislation in recent memory, with CBO releases on the House's HR 3200 and the Finance Committee's new draft legislation serving as gospel for Republicans, Democrats, conservative and liberal pundits, and journalists -- even this blogger -- alike.

But the secret of the scores is this: So far, they're not based on CBO's own independent analysis.

"The estimated impact of the provisions related to health insurance coverage is based on specifications provided by the committee staff, rather than on a detailed analysis of the legislative language," CBO wrote in its "preliminary analysis" of HR 3200 on July 17.

"There are several reasons why the preliminary analysis that is provided in this letter and its attachments does not constitute a comprehensive cost estimate for the proposal," the agency wrote on Wednesday in its analysis of the Senate Finance Committee's draft.

The House unanimously adopted a resolution on Monday commemorating the anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, meaning there was one less no vote than when the law was reauthorized in 2000.

That's because South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is no longer in the House. In 2000, his was one of three GOP votes against a stand-alone extension of the Violence Against Women Act. Ten days later, he cast the sole vote against a bill to curb sex trafficking that included the extension.

Rob Miller has been inundated with cash since the man he's challenging, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called President Obama a liar during a joint session of Congress last week.

Miller's collected about $900,000 in online donations through the contribution conduit ActBlue.com since Sept. 9, an unprecedented hydrogen moneybomb for an ActBlue candidate. But Miller and his new friends should know that money from Democratic donors across the country won't necessarily buy him the love of local voters.

The trend goes far beyond the phenomenon of El Tinklenberg, who swam in more than $800,000 in online contributions in the days immediately after Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said Obama and some members of Congress harbored anti-American beliefs. Aside from Tinklenberg, who lost, eight of the other top 10 House recipients whose profiles remain on ActBlue ended up losing in 2008.

Adrian Arroyo, the deputy communications director for ActBlue, says matching dollar figures to outcomes is "the wrong way to look at it." In Miller's case, he said, the flood of early money will help him build a campaign organization and keep the attention of national Democrats.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., denounced as partisan Democratic plans to offer a House resolution disapproving of his outburst during last week's presidential address to a joint session of Congress.

Here's Wilson's statement, which was released late Sunday morning:

"The American people are fed up with the political games in Washington, and I refuse to participate in an effort to divert our attention away from the task at hand of reforming health insurance and creating new jobs. Having apologized on Wednesday to the White House, we agreed that we must move forward in a civil manner to do the work the American people have sent us here to do. Health insurance reform is too important to take a back seat to political partisanship."

By refusing to participate, he means that he won't apologize, according to spokesman Ryan Murphy. He will attend.

A resolution disapproving of his action would be less severe than a "reprimand," which is, in turn, lighter than a "censure."

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone with even a modicum of respect for Congress who thinks Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has a leg to stand on in breaking the standard decorum of a presidential address to a joint session by yelling "Lie. You lie" during the speech.

Even Wilson was for apologizing before he was against it. But the episode raises an interesting set of questions: Is his sin one of tone? Is it one of content? Is it one of venue? Is it one of timing?

The answer: All of the above.

It's not the first time a president has heard a catcall during a joint session. It's not that public officials are innocent of using even more personal terms to denounce a president.

Decorum has been breached in the House chamber many times before. And presidents routinely are accused of lying -- or at least intentionally misleading -- even by members of their own party sometimes. Put them all together, though, and Wilson is the outlier as a contestant in the lying game.

For a more socially and politically graceful way to say the president lied during a joint session of Congress, recall the words of a certain junior senator from Illinois in his response to President Bush's 2008 State of the Union address.

Here's what then-Sen. Barack Obama said: "And finally, tonight we heard President Bush say that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know that's just not true."

And, as Warner Wolf used to say, let's go to the videotape.

Remember the allegation leveled against the congressional "Blue Dogs" that was a meme in July? The one that said the members of that coalition of center-right Democrats are in the pockets of insurers, because the health care industry is filling their campaign treasuries with cash?

While some members of the Blue Dogs and their political action committee have been heavily funded by stakeholders in the health care debate -- including to a notable degree insurers -- donations to the PAC actually dried up a bit over the summer.

It's not that doctors, drug companies, insurers and lobbyists have stopped giving to the Blue Dogs. It's just that the fundraising haul for the centrist coalition's PAC for July and August was way down from its pace in May and June.

That's just one small measure -- the quarterly October filings for each member will tell the full story of who's getting what from stakeholders -- but it's worth taking a look at.

CORRECTION: An article posted earlier today relied on inaccurate information from the House of Representatives.

A financial disclosure report filed by an aide to Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., was misidentified as Wilson's.

As a result, the description of differences between Wilson's earlier and more recent filings was inaccurate.

Here is the corrected version:

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., is heavily leveraged and his debts may even exceed his assets, according to a personal financial disclosure form that was amended just before Congress left for its August recess.

Wilson made headlines Wednesday night for yelling "Lie. You lie," at President Obama during an address to a joint session of Congress.

Lawmakers are required to declare what they own and disclose -- within a pretty wide range -- how much each asset is worth and how much income it provided. The intention of the disclosure law is to let constituents see the connections, if any, between their elected officials' public duties and private financial interests.

In Wilson's case, he updated a form revealing what he owned in 2008. The new version, filed at the end of July, has different assets than he identified in May.

Wilson now reports that his assets at year's end (not counting his residence) fall somewhere between $952,000 and $2,030,000.

Much of that was tied up in property owned by the Moseley Wilson Partnership.

His debts, in the form of personal loans and mortgages, fall somewhere between $880,012 to $1,930,000.

The major differences between the two reports are the addition of Exxon-Mobil stock worth $15,000 or less and a property in Springdale, S.C., worth between $50,001 and $100,000

-- Alex Knott of CQ MoneyLine contributed to this report.

Democrat Rob Miller's campaign war chest just got a whole lot heavier.

Miller is the Marine Corps veteran challenging Rep. Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican who took the opportunity afforded by a joint session of Congress on Wednesday to yell "Lie. You lie," at President Obama.

Progressive Democrats took that as a cue to donate to his opponent, and accounts earmarked for Miller on the progressive Website Actblue jumped from a few thousand dollars to $105,943 between the speech and 9:15 a.m. on Thursday.