Congress has apparently decided that it can only deal with one major fight at a time. At the same time that the parties jockey over whether to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, at the end of this week the current continuing resolution to fund the government expires. So, some progress has apparently been made on an agreement that would fund the government through the fiscal year.

In six days, the continuing resolution to fund the government runs out. To avoid a government shutdown, the House and Senate will have to agree on some stopgap measure to allow the government to continue to run. Yet all the talk in Washington is over a completely separate budget process, the Super Committee deliberations, which must come to a resolution by November 23.

Regardless of the strategy pursued by the White House and Democratic Congressional leadership, here’s what’s going to happen: there will be no jobs bills because of GOP obstruction, and Republicans will bring the country to the verge of a government shutdown. Again.

Way back in April, Congress agreed, after nearly causing a government shutdown, on a budget deal that cut $39 billion over the next six months. There were a lot of articles written in the aftermath about how the outlays actually increased and how Obama fleeced Boehner and how the whole thing got accomplished with no harm.

Well, the Center for American Progress, making a different point and trying to pin the bad economy on House Republicans, ran the numbers on the 2011 budget cuts. It turns out they cost the country 370,000 jobs.

As expected, Senate Republicans blocked the state fiscal aid bill that would have put as much as 400,000 teachers and public safety officials back to work. All 47 Senate Republicans voted against cloture on the motion to proceed on the bill. In addition, three members of the Democratic caucus said no. We knew that Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson would be no votes, but Mark Pryor also decided that a 0.5% surtax on every dollar over $1,000,000 for Sam Walton and the Walton family wealthy Americans was too much to ask. This means that the final tally on the bill was 50-50. In a sane world where majority rules, Vice President Biden would have cast the tie-breaker and 400,000 teachers and fire fighters and cops would have jobs to look forward to. As it is, the Senate is an undemocratic institution, and states still suffering with depressed tax revenues will have to continue the rounds of layoffs that have been a lead weight on the economy.

There’s also reason to suspect that the anti-regulatory environment Republicans seek has nothing to do with job creation or allowing business investment to take off, and everything to do with allowing corporations to run away with profits that they’ll pocket from being allowed to act with no controls on its behavior.

John Boehner says that he got 98% of what he wanted out of the debt limit fight. The only thing I can conceivably think of that he didn’t get was an additional hostage-taking situation over the debt limit. But those are in great supply in Washington.

President Obama pulled off a neat trick with his announcement on regulatory streamlining yesterday. Initially, it earned praise from the right (they claimed it was their idea) and emnity on the left, even though it looked to be more of an announcement of general principles rather than any specific prescription. Then, when asked if the streamlining would incorporate the two major legislative goals of the Administration so far, health care and financial reform, both of which have a major regulatory component, they said no, the announcement had nothing to do with that. And that earned the emnity of the right and muted praise from the left. So as a result, nobody’s happy with this clear kabuki announcement.

On the biggest issues of the session – tax policy and government funding – the Republicans got their way, and set the stage for the 112th Congress that should feature major spending cuts. In the process, Democrats did not even bother to get important government functions funded, including money for the implementation of their top two legislative achievements, health care and financial reform.

This is the lifeline of the foreclosure fraud crisis: funding of mediation programs and legal services attorneys. Lawyers need to be in the field so borrowers have a fighting chance at due process, to protect themselves from predatory servicers and prevent illegal foreclosures. Without more funding, the efforts at accountability may just wither. News organizations are doing a great job but the lawyers need to be funded.