let me bring in carrie budoff brown and lynn sweet, washington bureau chief for the "chicago sun-times." carrie, what happens now? does it mean more gets done? >> i don't think so. the senate was grinding to a halt anyways heading into 2014. there's not, you know, too many sort of big-ticket items that the president was looking to pass through the end of the year into next year. there's still big items. the defense authorization bill, there's a potential budget deal that is, you know, possibly forth coming in the next few weeks, so clearly there are things that need to be done but the senate is, you know, for all intents and purposes is stopping ahead of the election and, you know, it's hard to see something like immigration getting done, even though it passed the senate. but going back, seeing immigration have a chance because the well is poisoned there. but it has been for a while. >> is that what has happened? look, nobody thought that even in the senate there was the sense of unity, but they were able, lynn, at various times to get things done. democrats say they had no choice, tho