Mnuchin’s push drew a swift rebuttal from the House Freedom Caucus, which adopted an official position in opposition to a “clean” debt-limit hike calling for Congress to pair the new authority with spending reforms. The pushback set up an all-too-familiar quandary for Republican leaders: Negotiate with conservatives on a bill that might turn off moderates and fail in the Senate, or abandon the party’s right flank and turn to Democrats for help.

“We’re going to be talking with our members and with the administration on how we resolve the debt ceiling,” Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Thursday. “The debt ceiling issue will get resolved.” He acknowledged that the administration’s demand for an earlier vote had forced them to move up their timetable for acting on the debt ceiling, but he didn’t flinch at Mnuchin’s request for a clean bill. “Every treasury secretary says this and every treasury secretary needs to say this,” Ryan said.

Other Republicans suggested the Trump administration was borrowing a negotiating tactic from Obama by dialing up the urgency; Congress rarely acts without a deadline, and telling lawmakers the markets will crash in early September is probably the best way to get them to vote in July before heading home for a month. In the last couple of years, GOP majorities have mostly given up on debt ceiling fights; instead of trying to woo conservatives, Republican leaders have swallowed hard and asked Democrats to bail them out. That might be the likeliest outcome this year, and so far, Democrats have given no indication—yet—they’ll try to extract policy concessions in exchange for their votes. Watching Republican endure a round of embarrassing headlines has been reward enough.

For a time prior to the brinksmanship of the Obama years, congressional majorities approved debt-ceiling increases alongside their annual budget resolutions. That might be an appealing option for Republicans, who could meet the Freedom Caucus’s demand for spending reforms in the budget and demonstrate their continuing desire to erase longterm deficits.

The problem is that the budget isn’t proving any easier to pass.

As a non-binding statement of priorities, the budget had once been a point of pride for House Republicans, who rallied behind the entitlement reforms and tax cuts in the blueprints Ryan wrote as chairman of the Budget Committee. But this year, GOP lawmakers have spent more time picking apart President Trump’s proposal than debating their own. The party is divided about how deeply to cut domestic spending and worried about endorsing policies that could offer more political fodder for an energized Democratic opposition.

The budget process is already about two months behind schedule, and as with health care, there is growing skepticism among senior Republicans that they can pass anything in the more conservative House that could gain the support of the far narrower GOP majority in the Senate. “I’m always leery of the Senate, because their record on this is frankly not nearly as good as the House,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a senior member of both the budget and appropriations committees. “But I think there’s cause for concern on the House side, too.”