The clock keeps ticking towards March 18, the next shutdown deadline for the federal government. The betting at this point may not be for much in the way of compromise for this week.
Why not? Because Congress mainly works on deadlines.
"If you give Congress four weeks, guess what? They'll take four weeks," said Speaker John Boehner in February when asked about budget dealines and the behavior of lawmakers.
"Give them six weeks, they'll take six weeks."
Oh, how true that is.
As soon as it was apparent that the two week stop gap budget would get through Congress last week, you could feel the air coming out of the balloon in the halls of the Capitol.
Yes, there was a meeting of House and Senate leaders, along with Vice President Biden on Thursday about the budget, but there was nothing to indicate that the two sides were any closer to a deal.
In fact, Biden will be gone most of this week on an overseas trip - so that doesn't exactly lend itself to the Veep helping to hammer out a deal on the budget for the rest of this fiscal year.
The White House last week offered to make $6.5 billion more in budget cutbacks - a sort of "last, best offer" to the GOP - but that was quickly rejected by Republicans.
"The latest proposal is unacceptable and indefensible," said Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConell, who called the plan "unserious."
Democrats say they aren't interested in another two week budget extension - they would rather work out a long term budget deal - but so far, neither the White House nor Democrats in Congress have unveiled a plan.
What we will get this week are a couple of show votes on the floor of the Senate - one on the Democratic plan to cut $6.5 billion and one on the House GOP plan to cut $61 billion.
Neither will get anywhere close to 60 votes.
That means this week may be filled mainly with finger pointing, attacks, counterattacks, denials and political posturing.
Then next week, we'll see whether Congress gets moving or if we just put off the deadline for another two weeks.
One final note about the Democratic plan to cut $6 billion - when it was unveiled on Friday, Democrats said it represented $51 billion in cuts - but that was another example of Fuzzy Math.
The plan actually includes only $6 billion in real cuts. Add the $4 billion in cuts already approved and the $41 billion in fake "cuts" that Democrats try to argue they've made, and you get to $51 billion.
But watch how often in the next few days you hear the $51 billion number.
Republicans should know, since they keep talking about how they cut $100 billion in the House, when the truth is - they did not.
