PRESIDENT Barack Obama and Congress stand at a junction.

The road the US has traveled for the past five years is beginning to come to an end. The Federal Reserve, which pumped $3 trillion into the economy to keep the Great Recession from worsening, is withdrawing its financial lifeline amid signs of fresh economic growth. The US GDP is inching up and annual federal budget deficits are heading down. How Washington policymakers respond to the improvements in the economy may even sow the seeds for more cooperation in Washington. But don’t count on it.

Finger-pointing still abounds between the Democrats who control the White House and the Senate and the Republicans who control the House of Representatives ahead of midterm elections later this year that will determine control of Congress for the remainder of Obama’s presidency.

“The president’s policies are not working,” declares House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, counters: “We cannot have a country that’s paralyzed because of a group of people — the group of people who are the tea party-driven Republicans in Congress.” “There are no winners here,” suggests Obama, with just over three years to go to complete his economic legacy. “The American people are completely fed up with Washington.” Even as public confidence in the economy is improving, polls also show that Americans’ approval of Congress is at or near record lows. More key fiscal battles are looming after self-inflicted wounds like last fall’s government shutdown and repeated debt-limit crises over the past few years.

The federal government once again is about to bump into the limit on its borrowing authority, which is set by law. Last October’s deal to end the 16-day partial government shutdown suspended the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. That’s Friday. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has urged Congress to act quickly to raise the debt limit, saying “at some point very soon,” probably by month’s end, he’ll run out of delaying strategies, and the nation could default for the first time ever on some of its debt.

Some congressional Republicans are looking for concessions from the administration in exchange for their support on the debt limit increase.

Republicans constantly blame Obama and Democrats in Congress for a range of problems, beginning with the president’s rocky rollout of his health care overhaul and expensive government programs.

Democrats accuse Republicans of triggering the government shutdown and advocating hurtful spending cuts on social programs. Both parties are mindful of the enormous public anger that the shutdown ignited and its damage to the economy. Many don’t seem quite as eager to go to the mat again, especially on the fast-approaching debt ceiling.

Standard & Poor’s called the October shutdown, which furloughed 800,000 federal workers, a $24 billion drag on the US economy. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown, together with a cutback in government spending and higher taxes that took effect last year, subtracted 1.5 percentage points from last year’s economic growth, extending the nation’s long crawl out of the deep 2007-2009 recession.