The details on this emerging deal on various expiring measures are getting worse by the minute. The dominant policy desire here looks to be to get something done, regardless of the impact on federal employees, the humiliation of newly-drug-tested jobless workers, and the detriment to our health care system.

Late yesterday afternoon, news broke of a tentative deal to extend the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and the “doc fix” on Medicare reimbursement rates. Only we shouldn’t say that the deal would extend unemployment benefits, because it wouldn’t extend all of them. There will be cuts to the maximum number of weeks of benefits of anywhere between 10 and 36.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi released a statement that probably secures passage for a standalone, unfunded payroll tax cut. Meanwhile, the Senate in negotiating changes to unemployment insurance that may shorten it from 99 to 79 weeks or less or impose other restrictions.

Senate Democrats have a plan for the payroll tax cut legislation that House Republicans basically gave up on yesterday. They can add the Unemployment Insurance extension and “doc fix” to the payroll bill, along with offsets for the UI and “fix” that the GOP might buy, and force the whole package on the House as the deadline nears.

We know that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has rejected the new compromise policy on birth control access, and that the Republican leadership agrees with them. But does that mean they have a chance to shift policy legislatively? The chances of that took a severe blow today, when Maine Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins came out in favor of the Obama Administration’s new rules.

Just when it seems like it couldn’t possibly getting any lower, Congress’ job approval rating drops to another historic low. According to Gallup only 10 percent of the country now approves of the job Congress is doing.

The conference committee for the payroll tax cut is on a road to nowhere, and it’s clear that the House and Senate leadership will have to step in if the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix will get extended beyond the end of the month.

The Senate will vote as early as today on whether to punish transportation unions in a bid to get Federal Aviation Administration authorization through 2015. The House already passed its version of a “bipartisan compromise.” and unions can’t seem to get the Senate to stop it.

The STOCK Act was a media-driven bill that politicians felt they could not resist after 60 Minutes ran a (somewhat flawed) exposé on the insider trading activities of members of Congress. Once a must-pass bill like that gets into circulation, it’s going to become an attractive target for messaging amendments where members try to hitch a ride with their pet issues. And because Congress is held in low public esteem, the best of these amendments would deal with the same kind of ethics issues.

Meet your government, ladies and gentlemen. Josh Fox, the Academy Award-nominated director of the fracking documentary Gasland, was arrested today on Capitol Hill for attempting to film a public hearing. The GOP Committee did not want Fox filming their latest witch hunt.