Robert Walker, a Washington ethics attorney and former chief counsel for both the House and Senate Ethics Committees, explained that the Senate bill did include a provision that covered spouses and children, but when Cantor's office wrote the House version, this language was shifted to a different section of the bill.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The government's main experiment so far, cutting welfare benefits for lone parents, may cause more couples to stay together: Robert Walker, of Loughborough University, studied a group of lone mothers and concluded that welfare benefits had made it easier for them to decide to leave their partners.

ECONOMIST: The family