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The situation is getting dire:

A chaotic fall awaits Capitol Hill when lawmakers return to Washington in two weeks and face imminent fiscal deadlines to avoid sending the economy into a tailspin.

On Oct. 1, funding for the federal government will expire. And later this fall, the U.S. will default on its obligations unless Congress raises the borrowing limit, or debt ceiling. Averting these two cliffs will be one of the more daunting tasks facing a wildly dysfunctional Congress and a fractured Republican Party.

Good times a-comin', eh?

This is exactly why one Republican Congressman fled DC before the apocalypse:

"It reinforces all the reasons why I thought it was a good time to retire at the beginning of the year," former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), a friend and ally of Boehner, told TPM in a recent interview. "Because it looks like deja vu all over again. The same fights, the same cast of characters and the same unwillingness to find common ground."

"You have this little cabal who's going to vote no no matter what [the budget agreement is]. And that makes it awful difficult to find a path forward...So the leadership continues to have the same challenge," said LaTourette, who now heads up the lobbying firm McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies. He suspected that House Republican leaders will need Democratic votes to pass any government funding resolution.

It's that not-so-little cabal of 80 Right-wing Nuts who are unwilling to compromise that is the most terrifying.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a rocky Autumn.

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