That '90s movie "Dumb and Dumber" keeps coming to mind about Congress when we think about the stalemate over Federal Aviation Administration funding that ended Friday. The faceoff left 74,000 people - 70,000 construction workers and 4,000 FAA employees - furloughed for two weeks and cost the federal government hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales taxes.

Worse, in face of that fiasco, lawmakers cavalierly left town for vacation after finally breaking a crazy impasse on the debt ceiling, not caring that airline inspectors had to work without pay, or that millions of dollars in airline projects was at a standstill and workers were without jobs.

If the standoff had lasted until Congress returned from recess, the cost to U.S. taxpayers would have been over $1 billion. As it is, the stalemate robbed federal coffers of an estimated $371.8 million in taxes, including on airline tickets, jet fuel and cargo - money that could have been put to better use helping struggling Americans recover in this economy.

Dumb and dumber.

Fortunately, Congress still has some wise heads who stayed at work. (Pay attention, other lawmakers, that's what we elect and pay you for.) Those members didn't give up until a deal was made, and legislation was on its way to being approved. One of those members was Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Hutchison is the ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Of her work, fellow Republican Ray LaHood, who is transportation secretary in the Obama administration said: "She has played an extraordinary leadership role."

Hutchison proved to be an important bridge to Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives, who were refusing to deal on this matter without getting cuts to subsidies for small airports (about $200 million) and reversing a National Mediation Board decision that made it easier for airline and rail employees to unionize.

The deal restores FAA funding and authority to collect taxes until mid-September. It includes the airport subsidy cuts but not a reversal of the union rule.

Hutchison, who worked the phones tirelessly after members went home early last week, was able to persuade her fellow Republicans to set aside the fight on the union matter for another time.

She noted the contradiction about the FAA standoff: "I am a fiscal conservative, and I am trying to make the cuts that are necessary, trying to do the things that are right. But I have to question those who are saying we are [against subsidies that were] about $200 million, but we are going to waste $1 billion to not let a bill go through that keeps the FAA going. That just doesn't add up."

Other members of Congress could take some lessons from Hutchison, former Rep. LaHood, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the commerce panel's chairman, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who also kept working to broker this deal.

Common sense and Congress have been words too much at odds of late. It's time to make those words mesh. This country can't afford dumb and dumber.