Now even those very modest goals are in jeopardy because of the work that needs to be done on the Wall Street issue.

Originally, this Friday was to be it for the Congress until next January. Democrats had said they wanted no lame duck session, confident that they would be expanding their majorities in the House and Senate.

As for what needs to done still, the Congress hasn't finished one spending bill for the next fiscal year yet. For those not sure of that calendar, the new fiscal year begins one week from today.

Two years ago, Democrats blasted GOP leaders when Republicans went home for the elections after approving only two spending bills.

At this point, the Dems are going to put a bagel on the scoreboard, giving them an even worse record than the Republicans of 2006, who punted most of the federal budget to the next year, when the Democrats took charge.

So far in 2008, the House has approved one spending bill, on Military Quality of Life (not the actual defense budget) - while the Senate has not considered one spending bill on the floor.

This is unfortunately getting to be rather normal for the Congress, as the current budget process on Capitol Hill is simply broken.

Most spending decisions are now made by leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, during negotiations later in the year, with little input on the floor.

It used to be that lawmakers spent a good chunk of the Summer and Fall working on appropriations bills, debating major spending issues and voting on them, but no more. Those were fun debates to cover, but now they are a rarity.

Congressional leaders of both parties seem to spend more time now worrying about how to protect their members from tough votes when they are running the show than getting their work done.

So, instead of going home at the end of this week, I would put my money on the Congress coming back next week at a minimum.

This is also the time of year that the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur take a few days out of the Congressional schedule in each of the next two weeks, so Congress doesn't have much time to fool around.

My forecast is that lawmakers will go home with all kinds of major issues, like energy, unaddressed.

And then about 94% of them will get re-elected.