The federal government ended the fiscal year Friday with Congress every bit as divided and as close to paralysis as it was when bickering over deficits nearly shut down operations a few weeks ago.

Apparently, some members didn’t get the word that voters were seriously turned off by that partisan spectacle because they were back at it again in the last few days with yet another pointless fight over the budget. To avoid bringing government operations to a halt, they devised a convoluted, short-term deal on spending that kept the doors open — for a few weeks.

This time, the issue was how to provide $3.65 billion in proposed disaster relief to pay for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to this year’s natural disasters. The Republican-led House insisted that $1.5 billion of this amount be offset by cutting federal grants supporting fuel-efficient vehicles. The Democratic majority Senate and White House balked at having to shortchange a program they favor — particularly in a fragile economy — to satisfy unprecedented demands that emergency disaster funding be offset somewhere else in the budget.

In the end, fancy pencilwork by government accountants stretched FEMA’s money through the end of the fiscal year to keep the agency in operation until Friday. No offset would be required when the new fiscal year kicked in Saturday. That gimmick allowed the Senate to pass an overall temporary spending bill to fund FEMA and the rest of the government through Nov. 18 without having to cut any existing program.

But then what — another confrontation that threatens a shutdown?

The episode does not bode well for coming legislative tussles that will require negotiations and compromise, the lubricant of the legislative machinery. The needless mini-drama revealed that Congress remains on the verge of institutional collapse and incapable of resolving fundamental issues.

Funding government in a series of short-term fixes is no way to run the government of the world’s biggest industrial democracy.

It sets up repeated legislative confrontations, makes uncertainty a permanent feature of the economy and leads to repeated confrontations that threaten to stop government operations. If every dispute over relatively small issues turns into a big deal, there is no way to agree on the truly important questions.

The biggest is how to put the government on a sound fiscal footing without undermining the weak recovery. A congressional super-committee is supposed to come up with a plan for $1.2 trillion in reductions over 10 years by mid-November, but if the dispute over FEMA is any guide, lawmakers are in no mood to make the hard decisions — and, yes, compromises will be required.

Standing on principle — demanding that government reduce spending — is laudable. But when principle becomes a cover for obstructionism, it becomes counterproductive.

The priority should be to bolster the weak economic recovery. Virtually every candidate in Congress ran on a platform of “jobs, jobs, jobs” last year, but lawmakers now seem too caught up in spending disputes to focus on what’s important to the voters.

Stopgap funding measures and repeated shutdown crises won’t restore a sound economy and put America back in firm control of its destiny. If the country is in for another year of legislative gridlock, the only answer might be through the ballot box. Weary Americans shouldn’t have to wait that long.