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The latest figures show December was another month of steady, moderate job growth. But for many people still struggling with long-term unemployment, the situation hasn't actually changed much at all.

For Alecia Warthen, the last eight months have been painfully stagnant.

She was the first person in her family to finish college, after growing up in one of the roughest sections of Brooklyn. She had earned an accounting degree and worked as a bookkeeper for most of the last decade.

Then she lost her job with the City of New York last April, and she's now telling local grocery stores she'll do anything for a job — mop floors, stock shelves, bag groceries.

One morning she stopped by a Foodtown grocery store in the Bronx. She put in an application a few weeks before, but hadn't heard back. The man she spoke with immediately shook his head at her inquiry.

"They just closed one of my other Foodtown stores, and we're absorbing their help right now. So I have nothing open," he said.

"This is sad. This is so sad." Warthen said as she made her way back through the doors. "I'm going back home. Enough."

Warthen says she's applied for more than 100 jobs since her layoff and has had only four interviews so far. She's tried making clothes and curtains to sell — until her sewing machine broke. She even peddled homemade body lotions and home-cooked meals. But nothing's helped.

One Of Millions

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Warthen, 43, is used to taking care of her own problems. She raised six kids in the Bronx as a single mom and always had a job. Now, she and the three children who are still in the house are living on food stamps and $400 a week in unemployment insurance.

"I've always tried to aim high for myself," says Warthen, perched on her 11-year-old daughter's small, pink bed. "Instill the same values in my kids and stuff, and — just to think that everything has come down to this makes you feel like you just went to school for nothing. For nothing."

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The last thing Washington policymakers need is another obstacle to reaching agreements in the next two months on mandatory spending cuts and raising the nation's debt limit.

But the start of the new 113th Congress brought word that House Speaker John Boehner had sworn off future one-on-one negotiations with President Obama.

The vow to fellow Republicans came just days before Boehner faced re-election to the speakership, for which he needed to minimize GOP opposition. But taking Boehner at his word, some observers think the nation's capital could reach a new level of dysfunction.

"You know, we avoided the fiscal cliff but we left it in a way that leaves the town even more paralyzed," says Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman and one of Washington's top lobbyists. "If it was possible for Republicans and Democrats to be even more at odds with each other — or for the Republican Congress to be more at odds with the president than they were the last couple of years — that's happened."

Weber, a partner at Mercury/Clark & Weinstock, adds: "It worries everybody I've talked to a great deal about how we're going to meet some of these problems going forward. ... For the first time, I've thought it's possible we might actually go into default."

A Strained Relationship

Masters of ambiguity that they were, the framers of the Constitution didn't exactly spell out all the responsibilities of the speaker of the House. But in practice, one of those duties has been engaging in one-on-one negotiations with a president on important policy issues.

Matthew Green, a Catholic University scholar who studied speakers closely and has written a book about them, said he has never heard of a modern-day speaker refusing to participate in such talks.

"I certainly raised my eyebrows when I heard about it," Green said. "It's very unusual. I honestly can't think of a speaker in recent memory who ever made that kind of a pledge."

Granted, Boehner's stance against future negotiations with the president doesn't come out of nowhere.

On at least two occasions now — the summer 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations and the recent fiscal-cliff discussions — Boehner has held talks with Obama only to come away empty-handed and reportedly feeling that the president wasn't negotiating in good faith.

Not only that. All he's had to show for his trouble is the anger of many of his House Republican colleagues and outside conservatives who view such negotiations with the Democratic president as compromising their principles.

The 'Regular Order'

So from a Republican perspective, it makes a certain degree of partisan sense that the speaker would rather skip the gridlock of White House negotiations entirely and proceed directly to the gridlock of what's known as the "regular order": The GOP-run House passes legislation with little to no Democratic support that then gets ignored or voted down by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

One way of looking at what's happened regularly is that Boehner's negotiations with Obama have just delayed the inevitable congressional standoff as talks freeze discussions on Capitol Hill.

"Regular order has been hamstrung by these negotiations with the president. People have just been like waiting for Godot," said John Feehery, who was a top aide to former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert and now is president of Quinn Gillespie Communications. "They wait and wait and wait and, all of a sudden, they can't get anything done through the regular order.

"I think part of this is setting expectations," Feehery continued. "If you traipse down to the White House ... the expectation is you're going to come up with a deal. If you refuse to traipse down to the White House, and say, 'Pass our bill or pass your own bill and let's get going on it,' that's another set of expectations. Boehner can't be criticized if he goes through the regular order."

Of course, just because you say you won't negotiate doesn't mean you're not up for a chat. If the president requests that the speaker come down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to discuss a few important matters, Boehner would be up for that, says his spokesman, Michael Steel.

"The speaker is always willing to talk to the president, but we're going to address these challenges through the legislative process," he said. Leaving open the possibility of discussions between Obama and Boehner obviously leaves the door open for negotiations between the two men that aren't exactly identified as such.

'Somebody Else Is Cutting The Deals'

Still, Green, the expert on the speakership, saw Boehner's pronouncement as potentially counterproductive:

"If by making that commitment, Boehner meant that he would consult more closely with his colleagues in the House before agreeing to any deal with the White House, it makes some degree of sense. Even speakers as powerful as Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich have sometimes been pushed back by their rank-and-file members for making deals they didn't care for. But to refuse any negotiations with the White House means keeping the House out of the policymaking process altogether. Republicans would be cutting off their nose to spite their face."

Among the new members of Congress sworn in this week was Sen. Elizabeth Warren. And within days, the Massachusetts Democrat could become her state's senior senator.

That's because 28-year incumbent Sen. John Kerry is expected to be confirmed soon as secretary of state.

And replacing him later this year after a special election could be the very senator whom Warren unseated: Republican Scott Brown. For Brown, it would be an unusual second chance.

"Do-overs in the space of a couple of months are rare," said Jeff Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University, which is also where Brown attended college.

Berry says it's clear that Brown is well aware of his unique opportunity.

Just two months ago, Brown lost a contentious race to Warren, the most expensive Senate race in American history. But Brown was extremely gracious and almost shrugged off the loss as a bump in the road.

"There are no obstacles you can't overcome, and defeat is only temporary," Brown said during his election night concession speech.

Brown repeated that refrain in his farewell speech from the Senate floor last month. Fare-thee-well? Not really. The speech sounded more like: Goodbye-for-now.

"You know, depending on what happens and where we go — all of us — we may obviously meet again," Brown said.

Those senators in the audience do have some say over whether they meet again. If they confirm Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state as expected, Kerry's vacant Senate seat would be filled in a special election, likely to happen this summer.

Berry says Brown still has an organization and campaign money left over from the recent campaign, and is an automatic front-runner among Massachusetts Republicans, one who likely won't have to worry about winning a party primary.

"The Republican Party in Massachusetts has no one else. Literally no one else that can run a competitive race against whoever the Democrats nominate. So it's Scott Brown or bust," Berry said.

Massachusetts Democrats want to make it a bust. They were caught by surprise three years ago when Brown came from nowhere to win the seat of the late Ted Kennedy in a special election. State party Chairman John Walsh says Democrats won't be embarrassed again.

"We spent about a year and a half trying to make sure Scott Brown didn't continue in the Senate. Nobody's interested in sending him down there to negate Elizabeth Warren's votes right now," said Walsh. "We'll be ready."

The first Democrat to say he's running is veteran Rep. Ed Markey, and key Massachusetts Democrats, including Kerry, are lining up behind him. They want to avoid a bruising primary, when the winner would have only six weeks after that to wage a general election campaign.

But Democratic Reps. Michael Capuano and Stephen Lynch are also seriously considering running. Rep. Jim McGovern is not, but says an open Senate seat is a rare opportunity for ambitious Democrats, and he expects Markey won't be alone.

"Look, in a perfect world, it'd be nice if there was one candidate. But the notion that someone's going to clear the field — I'm not sure that's realistic," McGovern said.

While the Democratic field takes shape, Brown can just sit back and watch how things play out. He hasn't said whether he's running, but Berry says Brown would have to have a compelling reason not to take another crack.

"Scott Brown's going to have as much money as he needs," Berry said. "This is an opportunity for the national Republican Party to bloody the nose of Barack Obama. And they're not going to let this opportunity pass by. And it's all the sweeter if it comes from Massachusetts, which is a very, very blue state."

If Brown does run, it would be his third Senate campaign within four years.

When President Obama finally announced a fiscal cliff agreement late Tuesday night, he thanked several people who had worked to get a deal.

The first one he mentioned by name was the man standing next to him at the podium: "my extraordinary vice president, Joe Biden."

In the final hours of the standoff, Republican Mitch McConnell asked Biden to help push a deal over the finish line. It was far from the first time the vice president has played that role.

In 2009, Biden's chief economist, Jared Bernstein, was in an Oval Office meeting with the president. In the middle of the meeting, Bernstein remembers, the phone rang.

"And it's Arlen Specter announcing that he's going to become a Democrat and give the Democrats the majority in the Senate," Bernstein recalls. "And the president took the call and was extremely pleased. And when he got off the phone, he said something to the effect of, 'That was Joe Biden's work.' "

The White House has an entire legislative affairs office whose only job is to keep in touch with Congress. But often, this vice president acts as a one-man shop, doing the job on his own.

Bernstein says everyone in the White House acknowledges this.

"Not only is it recognized as one of his strengths, but it's one of the reasons he's there," Bernstein says. "I mean, you're talking about a president who was in Washington and in the Senate for all of two years, and a vice president who was there for 36."

Obama has a reputation for being aloof, especially with members of Congress. He doesn't take lawmakers golfing. He doesn't invite them over for movie night. He doesn't schmooze.

Biden is just the opposite. This week, he greeted incoming senators and their families at the start of the new Congress. He gave bear hugs, workout advice and facial caresses.