The real test for the week will be to see whether House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can each keep their respective caucuses in line long enough to pass budget resolutions through both chambers. If they succeed in doing that, they just might succeed in making the two chambers play nice enough with each other to agree on a singular budget plan that would effectively cut both Medicare and Medicaid (though the terminology they use isn't quite so stark) and repeal Obamacare.
Except that it won't because President Obama is never going to sign on to that plan.
But the main thing here is: what degree of harmony can the GOP foster? If they come out of the week with some degree of comity—especially in the House—it could set the stage for them to go head to head with the White House over successive budget battles. Come 2016, they could say, "Look, we might have been able to get something done but for the guy in the Oval Office."
However, if the week dissolves into a cat fight, Republicans will offer just one more lesson in Failure to Govern 101.
For Boehner, the main factions come down to the defense hawks v. deficit hawks. John Bresnahan and Seung Min Kim have the details.
Over the next few days, Boehner will have to appease dozens of defense hawks, who want an additional $20 billion in funding put into a war spending account for the Pentagon in order to support the budget plan. House Republicans already proposed more than $73 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operation fund, money that doesn’t get counted against strict spending limits imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
Boehner, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) promised defense hawks last week that the extra money would be included in the resolution once it hits the Rules Committee, which the speaker controls.
With that pledge in hand, and deficit hawks mollified for the moment that the budget resolution wouldn’t increase the deficit, Price was able to move the proposal through his panel Thursday morning on a straight party-line vote.
Okay, so through some triumph in mathematical wizardry, that defense spending doesn't actually count as spending in GOP land, which supposedly has set both factions free to vote for the budget. For now, the leader of the House "Freedom" Caucus—the roughly two dozen GOP crazies that are the bane of Boehner's existence—is supporting the House Budget.
On the Senate side, McConnell faces the same dilemma, with warmongers like Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina calling for more defense spending while fiscal conservatives fret over the deficit.
Room for error? Democrats aren't expected to vote for either budget resolution, which means McConnell can't lose more than three of his 54 senators and Boehner can't lose more than 27 of his 245 members.