This week the rhetoric about the debt ceiling, sequestration cuts, and basic funding of the government for the next year, the Budget, came to a head with the new threat of “shutting the government down“.

Fiscal slope talks have basically stalled out, but leader in the conservative movement Jim DeMint cried uncle this morning, affirming that the President will get higher taxes, though he exaggerated it to mean higher taxes on everyone, not just on those earning over $250,000.

The Senate passed, by a 90-1 count, an “Iran containment” resolution that creates that “red line” Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded for recently. And, it puts the red line for Iran’s nuclear program at a nuclear capability rather than a nuclear weapon, a shift from current Presidential policy.

I think Republicans have real vulnerabilities in this fight, which will play out over several months. John Boehner has no room to maneuver. He clearly cannot pass a budget or even a continuing resolution with his preferred cuts. And if he gives in to the White House and passes something at the $1.047 trillion level, he’ll lose substantial amounts of Republicans to his right. So far in his tenure, Boehner has not secured a deal that would require large amounts of Democrats for passage. But that appears to be his only option short of a shutdown.

We’re headed for a real showdown. The House has now rejected the bipartisan transportation bill from the Senate. Harry Reid has said that he would not accept a 90-day extension and wants to see the Senate bill pass. Something has to give.

Paul Ryan sped into action with his 2013 budget resolution. After releasing it on a Tuesday, he put it up for a vote in the Budget Committee on a Wednesday. This should have been immediately unacceptable to the other 37 members of the Budget Committee who allegedly have a function in crafting the budget. But they allowed the vote nonetheless. What’s surprising is that it only passed by one vote.

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.