House Republican leaders are alarmed that they’ll be unable to corral a majority to pass a budget in the coming weeks, a failure that would cast serious doubts about the ability of the new GOP-controlled Congress to advance its agenda and likely dash hopes of overhauling the Tax Code this year.

As budget season kicks off in earnest this week, defense hawks are clashing with fiscal hard-liners over military spending, Republicans are scaling back their deficit reduction targets, and Democrats are waiting in the wings to hammer GOP lawmakers with politically tough votes on education, infrastructure and health care.


In the House, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana are stuck between the budget-cutting demands of conservatives and the desire of defense hawks to provide the military with more robust funding. In the Senate, Republicans are already getting hit by Democrats after indicating they’ll target Medicaid and food stamps.

The blueprints due out this week in each chamber will provide the first hard evidence of how aggressively the GOP intends to pursue its top stated priority of fiscal discipline. Though the budgets are partisan documents that won’t be signed into law, failing to marshal enough GOP support to pass one would be a debilitating setback for a party trying to prove it can govern after taking full control of Congress.

“We’re concerned about the hollowing out of our military,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, illustrating the tensions within his party. “It’s difficult because … those of us that are highly concerned about the debt and deficit do appreciate that the Budget Control Act [is] actually governing some fiscal discipline.” He was referring to the 2011 deficit deal that imposed strict caps on defense spending.

The budget is among a slew of important issues confronting Congress. A formula that determines how much the government reimburses doctors who serve Medicare patients needs to be updated. Federal highway policy expires in the coming months. And later this year the nation’s borrowing limit will have to be raised.

But for now all eyes are on the budget. And the struggles to pass one are more severe — and more openly on display — in the House.

Lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee, as well as some appropriators, are furious that House Budget Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) plans to stick to the Budget Control Act limit on defense spending. Instead, they want to meet or exceed President Barack Obama’s $561 billion request for defense spending — which Obama paid for by proposing tax increases.

The conflict came to a head on Thursday, when House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry of Texas and several other committee members told Price during a conference call that the military is due for a funding increase.

That came after 70 House Republicans wrote to Boehner in late February and told him they wanted defense spending to be at least equal to what Obama had asked for. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who organized that letter, said those same 70 members have pledged to vote against any budget that doesn’t adequately boost defense spending — which would deny leadership a sizable bloc of GOP votes.

But the push to bust the budget caps on defense is sure to anger fiscal conservatives, who are already concerned about whether the budget will do enough to cut the deficit. Now, top-level House lawmakers and aides say they will have to work aggressively to wrangle the sufficient number of votes over the next two weeks.

To get the GOP conference on the same page, Scalise has gathered lawmakers in his third-floor conference room twice a week since early February for budget strategy sessions.

And McCarthy sent lawmakers home last week with a slideshow describing the budget process and laying out GOP goals: balancing the budget in the next decade, repealing Obamacare, shoring up entitlement programs, reforming the Tax Code, strengthening national defense and using “reconciliation to advance solutions through Congress and to the president’s desk.”

The divisions aren’t quite as stark in the Senate — at least not yet — but some defense hawks have started to draw lines there, too. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) flatly answered “no” when he was asked whether he could support a budget that did not increase defense spending.

“You’ve got a division in our party,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “This thing is coming to hit this year. Democrats helped create sequestration, but we’re now in charge, so this is a defining moment for the Republican Party.”

A bipartisan group of five senators has quietly started to discuss how to ease the sequester, a set of automatic budget cuts that hits domestic and defense programs unless Congress comes up with a fix. The senators include Graham and Republicans Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Also involved in the talks are Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

The sequester fix would come through what the senators have been calling a “deficit-neutral reserve fund,” which could include closing some tax loopholes to raise revenue and other spending changes that would replace the automatic budget cuts. This fund would come separately from a budget resolution, since budgets aren’t signed into law.

At least in the Senate, Republicans are looking for Democratic support, because any legislation that would undo the sequester would need at least 60 votes to pass.

“Bottom line for me: I need to see an endgame where the Department of Defense does not get destroyed before I vote for a final budget,” Graham said.

There are other challenges aside from the brewing clash between defense hawks and fiscal conservatives.

Though Republicans have been vocal about wanting to balance the budget in a decade — a top Republican fiscal priority — it’s unlikely the savings in the budget resolution will come near the amount needed to do so. Last week, the Senate Budget Committee heard testimony that it would take $5.5 trillion in deficit reduction to balance the budget by 2025. That would likely mean deep cuts to domestic programs, given stiff Republican resistance to tax increases.

Meanwhile, Democrats are ready to pounce on the budget with amendments highlighting domestic programs such as health care and education. Votes to cut those areas could be tough for Senate Republicans running for reelection in swing states next year.

As some details of the Senate budget became clear last week, Democrats began their attack — pointing to savings that Republicans would like to extract from Medicaid and food stamps for the poor.

“Balancing the budget on the backs of working families who have borne the brunt of the recession makes no economic sense,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

If the two chambers ultimately can’t come together on a budget, Republicans won’t be able to wield a powerful budget maneuver known as reconciliation, which would allow them to enact policy changes with 51 rather than 60 votes.

Senate Republicans are now keeping their options open on reconciliation, particularly if the Supreme Court rules against the administration on subsidies available under the health care law and Congress comes under pressure to provide a fix. The decision in the case, King v. Burwell, is expected in late June.

But the challenge before reconciliation will be getting both chambers to agree on a budget.

“It’s likely to be” difficult, said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who was previously the top Republican on the Budget Committee. “But I think our members know how important it is. Even if we get an imperfect budget, it’s better than no budget.”

Anna Palmer contributed to this report.