NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Congress is headed home...and we won't see the new 108th Congress until January. I've called this Congress, the 107th, the Don't-Do-Much Congress, because it didn't. Perhaps that's understandable, because the House was controlled by the Republicans, and the Senate by Democrats. Whatever the reason, it's instructive that this Congress had time to vote itself a pay raise, but not to pass an extension of unemployment benefits that will expire next month.

The Senate and the House did pass separate legislation that would have provided for the extension, but neither would accept the other's plan. It's always interesting to find out exactly which principles are so dear to our elected officials that they can't bear compromise, even when confronted with the temptation to do something to alleviate the needs of nearly a million unemployed Americans whose benefits are set to expire. It must warm the hearts of the families of our Senators and Congressmen that they faced no such dilemma of principle when it came to their pay raise.