Barack Obama's promise to enforce pay-as-you-go -- or "PAYGO" -- budgeting rules was significantly affected by the Republican takeover of the House during the 2010 elections.

A recap: PAYGO rules have existed in different forms, but the general principle is that they require new spending to be balanced by spending cuts, revenue increases or a combination of the two.

One complication affecting this promise is that two separate provisions go by the name PAYGO.

One is a law Obama signed on Feb. 12, 2010 -- the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. The legislation increased the public debt limit and instituted a new PAYGO statute. The Office of Management and Budget keeps track of new spending and tax law changes. At the end of the year, OMB checks whether spending increases and tax cuts have been offset by spending cuts or tax increases. If not -- and if Congress doesn't act to make offsetting cuts -- there is an automatic across-the-board spending cut.

However, the law includes lots of exemptions, including a provision that allows Congress to declare the spending as "emergency" and thereby reduce the spending total. "This rarely happens and isn't much of an issue," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The other provision known as PAYGO referred to rules in the House and Senate governing requiring each individual bill to have offsets that ensure the bill doesn't add to the deficit. The Senate rule continues to exist, though it can be waived with the support of 60 Senators (which is not really an additional threshold considering that virtually all significant legislation in the Senate these days requires 60 votes to pass).

The version of PAYGO that governed House actions when the Democrats were in control allowed either spending cuts or revenue increases to be used as offsets for new spending. But after the Republicans won control in the 2010 elections, they instituted a new rule called "cut-as-you-go," or "CUTGO."

Under CUTGO, mandatory spending increases can't be offset by tax increases -- only by spending cuts. In addition, CUTGO does not apply to tax cuts, which reduce revenue and, without being offset, worsen the deficit.

CUTGO has been enforced in the House, Ellis said. But he added that as far as deficit reduction goes, "it takes what was already a weak, swiss cheese program and makes it even weaker."

Obama's signing of the statutory PAYGO law earns him partial credit for sticking to his promise, but the procedural rules in the House and Senate -- which have had a bigger impact on the overall spending -- are entirely out of his control. And where those procedural rules are concerned, the House's PAYGO provision was replaced by the GOP with one that runs directly contrary to the vision outlined in Obama's promise. We rate this a Compromise.