At the start of this Congress, I optimistically hoped that the stars were aligned for that rarest of events: a federal budget and appropriations process that ran on time, preventing the need for continuing resolutions and threats of shutdowns. After all, both chambers of Congress were controlled by one political party, so the stalemates between the House and Senate should have been minimized.

Unfortunately, it looks like Congress is on track to keep up the 20-plus year record of bickering, delaying and simply failing to pass individual appropriations bill prior to the end of the fiscal year on September 30. To date, the House has passed six of the 12 appropriations bills, and reported another two out of committee. The Senate has passed zero bills and has only reported five bills out of committee. With 15 legislative days left before Congress leaves for the August recess, the numbers leave a little room to hope that Congress might go back to their districts on a track to finish up the appropriations on time.

But looking at what is actually happening in Congress makes clear we're headed for another round of either fiscal negotiations or shutdown-showdowns or both. To get a sense of what we are likely to see in the months ahead, look no further than the unfolding drama of the defense appropriations bill. Even in the years with the greatest delays to the overall appropriations process, the defense appropriations bill is usually considered a “must-pass” bill that can move independently of any omnibus or continuing resolution package. This year the disagreements about appropriations are so great that while the House of Representatives passed a bill, the Senate has yet to even schedule floor consideration, a sign most believe indicates there are not 60 votes to pass the bill as it currently stands.

What is the big hullaballoo about the Pentagon spending bill? As you may recall, the president's budgetignored the Budget Control Act of 2011 for both the Pentagon and the rest of the domestic discretionary budget. For the Pentagon, the president proposed increasing base spending above the Budget Control Act caps, and reducing the size of the slush-fund like Overseas Contingency Operations account to a still large $51 billion. Congress also wants to spend more money on the Pentagon than the Budget Control Act caps allow. Not so, the other areas of the budget. So the House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that includes $88.4 billion in the Overseas Contingency Operations account, much of it neither overseas nor contingent. The committee draft of the Senate bill includes $86.8 billion for the overseas account. Democratic Senators balked at such a direct challenge to the idea of the spending caps – that both Pentagon and domestic spending would be capped if Congress couldn't come up with a sustainable path to deficit reduction. And that balk means the Senate cannot proceed to consideration of the bill.