Montoy resulted in a 2005 ruling in which lawmakers raised the base state funding to $4,492 per student (from about $3,900), and the court approved it.
The pattern adds to a bipartisan history in which lawmakers from presidents' own parties have tended not to object to invocations of executive power.
The murky outcome followed votes last month in the House in which lawmakers voted down resolutions both to end and to authorize the mission.
That has forestalled the usual protests on the issue, in which lawmakers and prison guard unions rally around specific prisons in their districts.
That planned cut, scheduled to start Jan . 1 involves an annual budgetary rite in which lawmakers scramble to avoid scaling back the doctors' fees.
The chairman, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, disclosed plans for the legislation at a hearing in which lawmakers voiced frustration about rising fuel prices.
The initiative by the conservative Republican representatives was one of several political maneuvers today in which lawmakers from various wings of each party were angling for political advantage.
The vote followed a morning debate in which lawmakers from both parties extolled government doctors and nurses saving lives, emergency relief workers braving disasters to rescue citizens, and NASA scientists exploring space.
He and his co-founder, Beppe Grillo, a comedian, dream of replacing Italy's corrupt and wasteful system of democracy with a new kind in which lawmakers enact the will of the people as expressed in referenda on the web.
