House and Senate leaders emerged from a shorter-than-expected meeting with George W. Bush today proclaiming that they’d made “progress” in resolving the impasse over war funding and a timeline for bringing the troops home.

What does “progress” mean? Not that anyone is any closer to an agreement, apparently, but that the parties have come up with a process for moving forward: Representatives from the House and the Senate will begin meeting immediately with Josh Bolten, Stephen Hadley and Rob Portman in the hopes of coming up with some kind of compromise that can satisfy everyone.

The best Harry Reid could say of it all? “The tone of this meeting was positive. I think it was also clear that the president understands that there’s a separate unit of government that he has to deal with called the Congress.”