On Capitol Hill, yeoman’s work is needed to achieve consensus on the thorniest of issues, the legislative product of the most contentious of negotiations. This week, the whips on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress are hard at work trying to rapidly round up votes for a bill that will suspend the debt limit, set some new federal spending guidelines, and address other issues that have, for various reasons, suddenly fallen under the umbrella of extreme urgency. It is not unlike the annual effort to enact a budget framework and then an omnibus spending bill. The whole process is described as being like trying to put socks on an octopus.

On Capitol Hill, yeoman’s work is needed to achieve consensus on the thorniest of issues, the legislative product of the most contentious of negotiations. This week, the whips on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress are hard at work trying to rapidly round up votes for a bill that will suspend the debt limit, set some new federal spending guidelines, and address other issues that have, for various reasons, suddenly fallen under the umbrella of extreme urgency. It is not unlike the annual effort to enact a budget framework and then an omnibus spending bill. The whole process is described as being like trying to put socks on an octopus.

On Capitol Hill, yeoman’s work is needed to achieve consensus on the thorniest of issues, the legislative product of the most contentious of negotiations. This week, the whips on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress are hard at work trying to rapidly round up votes for a bill that will suspend the debt limit, set some new federal spending guidelines, and address other issues that have, for various reasons, suddenly fallen under the umbrella of extreme urgency. It is not unlike the annual effort to enact a budget framework and then an omnibus spending bill. The whole process is described as being like trying to put socks on an octopus.