Schieffer: Washington is done for 2014

The thing about the news is you can never know where it's going, but lately it's falling into an all-too-familiar pattern.

How many Sundays have we started this broadcast the way we did today, with some terrible story from overseas, while back home there is an equally important story competing for attention?

The overseas stories change, but here is the worrisome part: the story here is always just more of the same-old-same-old -- yet another variation of how Washington doesn't work.

The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman remarked the other day that Silicon Valley is the place where ideas come to be launched; Washington is the place they come to die.

But it is worse than that. As we saw last week, Washington has now given up on even trying to make the old ideas work.

It is only February, but the way I read it, the president's retreat from entitlement reform, coupled with the Republican retreat on immigration reform, all but makes it official: Washington is done for the year.

Expect nothing else of consequence to happen here.

As a rule, not much gets done anyway in an election year, but Washington is off to its earliest start ever.

Now, wait a minute: Can you really get an early start on doing nothing?

Sure you can, in Washington!