How can a family with rent of £400 a week survive on the £100 left if the overall cap is brought in?

The post-2012 changes might give the European Commission greater power to impose overall caps on national governments.

This includes placing an overall cap on spending and limiting the amount of money a candidate could spend from his own personal wealth.

But an overall cap could not work until a spending lid was put on the individual programs - Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' benefits and the like.

The Administration wants to put a fixed overall cap on the total emissions of greenhouse gases by industries.

Also, the hat has become more structured, versus the overall "floppy" cap of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

There is an overall cap which guarantees that at no point can the accumulated principal exceed 110 percent of the original loan.

There is a very real risk that excessive pressure on vulnerable, energy-intensive industries could lead to a loosening of the overall cap.

That would require a separate vote to raise the overall cap on discretionary spending.

The point, of course, was to keep the total down and enforce the region's overall caps.