"We must avert a default," Reid said, "I urge my Republican friends to join me to move forward with the only compromise plan that's left; in fact, the only option left at all to save this country from default."

McConnell made clear Reid does not have the support to move forward on his bill as it stands. "I want to disabuse my good friend of the notion that somehow it's going to pass," he said. The Kentucky Republican took issue with Democratic charges that the GOP is filibustering Reid's bill. McConnell read back to Reid his own quotes from 2007 that 60 votes were required in the Senate to move significant pieces of legislation. The big difference? Reid was in the minority back then, as McConnell is now.

Despite the gravity of the looming financial crisis and the diminishing window of time to resolve the long-running dispute, Republicans and Democrats nevertheless indulged themselves in revisiting their own tortured history of filibusters as a means of blocking or redirecting the flow of legislation.

Reid will use all available time to pressure Republicans into abandoning their filibuster and force the Senate into what appears to be a pointless wee-hour vote, certain to entomb his bill in a legislative grave.

While the White House was publicly urging Congress to move forward. "The parties are not that far apart here," the president said in his weekly address to the nation. "There is very little time."

The incendiary rhetoric surrounding the Boehner and Reid plans belies the fact that the two proposals are not miles apart in substance, which would suggest a compromise is reachable.

One key difference between the Boehner and Reid measures: the timetable. Boehner would require another vote to raise the debt ceiling early next year only if Congress meets two conditions: enacting further deficit reduction and sending a balanced budget amendment to the states, despite the fact that the constitutional amendment does not have the support necessary to emerge from either chamber. The Reid bill would provide mechanisms--first authored by McConnell--to allow for enough money to lift the debt ceiling through the next election.

But the politics of the debate, and the pressure from the GOP's right flank to hold the line against the Democrats, has fueled a noxious atmosphere on Capitol Hill. "We can not unite America if we divide the movement," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), a long shot 2012 presidential contender, on the difficult dynamics within his party. "Consequently the time has come for the tea party to grow up and the Republican Party to wake up and serve and save this great nation."

The political stakes were high for Democrats as well with Obama facing reelection in a sour economic climate and Democrats' Senate majority up for grabs next year.

If McConnell and Reid do in fact fail to compromise, and Reid can't appeal to seven Republicans to side with Democrats on cloture, the Senate will push the nation closer to default with a looming Tuesday deadline.