Congress marked an official deadline for budgetary failure Monday at midnight, when a new fiscal year began without the House and Senate agreeing on a single appropriations bill – an achievement not seen in Washington since 1974, when the modern era of budgeting began. This is a failure with many causes, but the inability of leadership to work with the opposing party is primary among them.

For the Senate, the key date this year was April 15, when it was supposed to have completed a budget resolution as a guide for agreeing to the spending bills. It still doesn’t have one. This unwillingness to follow budget procedures established over the last 27 years has resulted in gridlock on the bills that direct government spending, and it provides an opportunity for mischief because this year’s budget coincides with the expiration of budget enforcement provisions that include spending caps and pay-as-you-go rules established by the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. The process, put in place in the mid-1970s by the Senate’s first Budget Committee chairman, Maine’s Sen. Edmund Muskie, is being ignored, and the caps are now off even as the federal deficit is once again climbing.

Some Republicans, even while having their own spending priorities frozen because of the impasse, nevertheless seem to be enjoying the spectacle of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle flounder with the same Senate members who a year ago under the Republican majority were able to get their work done. Sen. Daschle has tried to get move the spending bills along this summer under a dual-track process in which two major bills were considered simultaneously. The plan didn’t work very well in part because, for example, the majority leader allowed his colleagues last month to debate for weeks over competing wildfire-suppression bills.

The Senate has passed three of the 13 required bills; but the House, which adopted a budget bill in March, has done only a little better, having passed five. And the House has had an easier time because it relies on the Senate to return balance to legislation representatives have rammed through only for ideological reasons. The agenda of House Republicans was clear enough five or six years ago; what it is now is anyone’s guess.

Money will still flow to government services through continuing resolutions that could last a couple of weeks or could go into the winter. What is lost, however, is policy, the measures Congress has debated and passed throughout the year. Welfare reform is stalled, as is election reform. Environmental improvements like the Clean Powers Act aren’t moving and neither is bankruptcy reform.

Clearly, with homeland security issues, Congress had a full schedule this year, but just as clearly its leadership knew this back in January, and certainly saw the coming budget fights by early spring, when there was still plenty of time to act. Now Senate Democrats see polls telling them they may soon be the minority part again, and want to get back to campaigning. That’s understandable.

But if they want to impress voters, they should remain in Washington with their colleagues and finish their work responsibly. A lot more than an election depends on their decisions in the next couple of weeks.