Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is attempting a high-stakes gamble, tying the payroll tax/unemployment insurance legislation that the House will vote on today with the omnibus spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Without compromise on the former, according to Reid, the latter cannot pass, increasing the risk of a government shutdown.

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.

The Senate reached agreement on a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government, including reduced emergency funds — but without offsets — through November 18. This was a win for the Democrats, who preserved the principle of emergency funding without offsets.

Despite threats to carry on with a one-week recess, Congress stayed in session, with still no agreement on funding the government past this Friday. That means the threat of a government shutdown is still there.

Governors in states affected by Hurricane Irene – two Democrats and two Republicans – are urging Congress to restore FEMA funding for disaster relief without delay. Govs. Chris Christie (R-NJ), Tom Corbett (R-PA), Bev Perdue (D-NC) and Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) made the statement:

“Federal assistance for the victims of storms and floods should be beyond politics,” the governors wrote Friday. “Our states’ governments and our citizens are doing their part to restore and rebuild. The federal government must also do its part.”

The House of Representatives passed their continuing resolution to fund the government for the first part of fiscal year 2012, but the odds of a government shutdown increased because the House offset disaster relief funding, while the Senate opposes offsets.

Yesterday’s setback for Speaker John Boehner on a continuing resolution to fund the government shows what little real control Boehner has over his caucus. With 242 members, Boehner has the ability to pass any legislation he wants without Democratic crossover votes – and in this case he got 6 Democratic crossovers. He has a good deal of power at his disposal to threaten Congressmen, to tell them their legislation will never see the light of day, to withhold needed campaign support, to knock them off committee assignments. He did all this and more yesterday. And he still could not budge the more conservative members of his party.

The House failed to pass a stopgap continuing resolution to fund the government today, as Democrats mostly held together to reject the bill, which included a cut to a clean vehicles loan guarantee program to offset disaster relief funding.

The reason that the minority Democrats had leverage at all was because House conservatives refused to vote for the stopgap bill, which funds the government for two months in Fiscal Year 2012 at the level of spending agreed to in the debt limit deal. Those 48 conservatives wanted to break the deal and cut spending to a lower level than the agreed-upon amount. And John Boehner couldn’t whip them to his side.