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This is a GabFest Extra, day 14 of the 2013 government shutdown.

It's Monday, October 14th.

I'm Slate editor David Plotz here in our DC studio.

Joining me by phone is Slate's chief political correspondent John Dickerson. Hello, John. It is day 14 of the shutdown, John. Are we in the home stretch? Let's discuss that. But first, let me just run through what's going on. The deadline that approaches, the deadline that could throw the world

into recession, the Thursday deadline that the Treasury Department has set their estimate for when

the U.S. government will exceed its debt limit and possibly default on its debt. That deadline

approaches rapidly. The good news is that there's a lot of action in the U.S.

Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have been

working on a deal since yesterday. At the time that we're taping this on Monday afternoon,

both men have said that they're optimistic about reaching agreement. There was a planned 3 p.m. meeting in the

White House between the president and congressional leaders that was put off, apparently,

because there was so much progress in the Reid McConnell talks. The big question that we'll talk

about is even if the Senate gets a deal out, will the House, which is controlled by Republicans, unlike the Senate,

will the House be willing to go along with the deal, which doesn't include some of the

concessions that House Republicans have been looking for all this time?

So, John, first, can you just give us a sense about what is the outlines of a Senate deal

are likely to be, given what we've heard so far?

Well, it looks like the Senate deal is going to basically be a decision to raise the debt limit until February of next year,

and then without any conditions uh... tied to it

...