The word from Capitol Hill is that the Senate has reached a compromise to pass a continuing resolution (CR) until February 8th, ending the shut down and reopening the Federal Government. The agreement is that in exchange for funding governmental operations, the Democrats have been promised that an immigration bill will be allowed to reach the Senate floor. As of this writing, the Senate has passed the CR and the House is expected to quickly pass it as well.

While this is good news from a research perspective, it’s hard to see how these issues will be resolved in three weeks. There is still no budget caps agreement on defense vs non-defense spending levels (a major issue for defense hawks, who want large increases to defense spending, and for deficit hawks, who want to curtail government spending); and the prospects of an immigration bill being taken up by the House of Representatives are slim to none. The bottom line is, don’t be surprised if we go through this again in early February.