Both Cagle & Richardson are keenly aware that in the constant tension between the Georgia House & Senate, to cave-in is to lose face and, thus, power.

Dick Pettys of InsiderAdvantage Georgia shares the big picture of the 2008 legislative session:

[W]hile it hasn't been as long as last year's interminable session, just about anyone you ask in the chambers, in the corridors or in the press suite will say it seems like it's been much, much longer.

[With respect to House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who wields the gavel in the House, and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who presides over the Senate,] each is keenly aware that in the constant tension between the House and Senate, to cave-in is to lose face and, thus, power.

There's also an absent Gov. Sonny Perdue to be taken into consideration.

If the governor isn't happy with the work product, he's shown no reluctance in the past to freely wield a line-item veto pen, as lawmakers well know.

The session, in fact, opened with the House voting to override 12 of Perdue's vetoes from last year, but the Senate would only go along with one of them. That did nothing to improve House-Senate relations, of course, and they've only worsened in the following weeks.

There's been a lot of trash-talk throughout the session, mostly from a House infuriated with the Senate. But the Senate's engaged in some of it, too. For example, when Richardson failed in a high-profile bid to dump a DOT board member who voted against his candidate for the DOT commissioner's job, Cagle said this: "I think in this business you win some and you lose some. And I don't know anything that he's won yet."

In the Senate, Cagle continued to exert the steady hand that, in the past two years, has turned the Senate from a bickering, fiercely partisan body into a collegial institution.

[T]here's no script and no apparent plan for an end-game. This could be a wild and wooly finish.