Congressional leaders moved to clear up some uncertainty Tuesday, but in so doing, they may merely create more. House Republican leaders would like to pass a measure funding the government through Sept. 30, but keeping the Homeland Security office open only for short bursts to pressure the president over his executive action deferring deportation of illegal immigrants.

Most House Republicans appeared ready to go along with this half measure, but conservative groups opposed the strategy as not confrontational enough on issues like the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change regulations or the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s antidiscrimination efforts. Anti-immigration conservatives made it clear they would keep opposing the undocumented-worker executive order.

“This is the time to fight, this is the ground to fight on, and I’m a little bit amazed that that isn’t more clear to more people,” declared Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa.

Negotiators have all but given up culling the government’s growing list of temporary tax measures, making some permanent and jettisoning the most egregious tax giveaways. Instead, the House will vote Wednesday on a measure to restore almost all the tax breaks that expired last year for one year retroactively. That would allow taxpayers to claim them on their 2014 tax returns while forcing Congress to grapple with the issue again early next year.

“Short of not passing anything at all, this is probably the worst of all possible worlds,” said Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “Rather than the certainty that would come with making some of the more prominent individual and business tax extenders permanent, families, individuals, and businesses will have to once again put long-term plans on hold in hopes that Congress can get its act together next time around.”

Meantime, 45 House Republicans pleaded with their leaders to bring to a vote a multiyear extension of federal terrorism risk insurance, which is set to expire this month. The issue is vital to developers in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere, who cannot get large building projects insured in the private sector without a government backstop.