WASHINGTON — After being granted three weeks to cut what has been an elusive budget deal, Speaker John A. Boehner is navigating the uncharted territory between legislative pragmatism and Tea Partyzeal.
With conservative Republican House members demonstrating emphatically on Tuesday that they are not afraid to buck Mr. Boehner if he strays from their exacting standards, the new speaker and his leadership team face difficult choices as they seek to end the first major fiscal fight of the year.
Mr. Boehner can appease his party’s rebellious right wing by insisting on the $61 billion in cuts and the multiple restraints on Obama administration policy already approved by the House, risking a government shutdown in early April because Senate Democrats and the president will never accept those terms.
Or he can strike a compromise that passes with Democratic support, as happened on Tuesday when a three-week budget bill was approved by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats after 54 conservative Republicans rejected it as insufficient. But if he relies too heavily on Democratic support, it could be seen as a betrayal of the Tea Party ideology that catapulted Republicans to the majority in November and made him House speaker.
Such is the tension that Mr. Boehner will face throughout the 112th Congress as he negotiates with a Democratic Senate and White House while trying to manage a restless band of government-slashing Republicans who are going to press him to hold the party line if he values their support. Once this year’s budget battle is settled, Congress will move on to potentially bigger fights over whether to raise the national debt limit and how to rein in the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
“Boehner has a tiger by the tail,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat and a veteran Congressional insider. “The problem with riding the tiger is you may end up inside it.”
In a sense, the defections by conservatives on Tuesday provide Mr. Boehner with negotiating leverage when he sits down with the White House and Senate Democrats. He can point to his restive right flank to make the case that he will not be able to deliver Republican votes if he gives away too much. But Democrats say the bipartisan vote shows that it is possible to come up with a package that is acceptable to large segments of both parties.
As they assessed the fallout from Tuesday’s party split over the short-term budget bill, top Republicans said their strategy was essentially unchanged. They remain intent on striking an agreement with President Obama and Senate Democrats that will keep the government running through Sept. 30 while allowing the new House majority to claim a deficit-cutting victory.
Mr. Boehner acknowledged as much at a party forum on job creation on Wednesday when he noted that Republicans control only one sliver of the government and that there are other players “we need to deal with to keep the government open.”
As they dig in for what they hope will be a final round of negotiations, the leadership is also gaming how to sell any compromise to House Republicans since it, by definition, will not give them all that they want.
At the moment, both sides can see the makings of a deal that would include $30 billion to $40 billion in cuts — not far from where Republicans started before the freshmen clamored for steeper reductions.
To make that figure more palatable, Mr. Boehner and other party leaders have begun emphasizing to their colleagues how significant such reductions would be and reminding them that the current fight is just the first of three, with the 2012 budget and the debt-limit increase following close behind.
By the time that House Republicans face their next spending vote in early April, the leadership hopes to have in hand the budget proposal being crafted by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Budget Committee chairman. That plan is expected to call for substantial future savings that will make the $61 billion now being debated seem like small change.
Top Republicans hope those long-term cuts will soothe lawmakers who are unhappy with compromise, particularly the 87 Republican freshmen who ran on a pledge to cut $100 billion in spending.
While it might be possible to split the difference on spending, there’s another factor that could cause more friction between Mr. Boehner and his caucus. Republicans have added several ideologically charged provisions to their budget-cutting bill in an effort to cripple the new health care law, block new emissions rules, limit enforcement of last year’s Wall Street overhaul and to rein in the Obama White House in other ways.
Some Republicans say they might be willing to accept smaller cuts, but they are not budging on policies like stripping money from the health care law. “These are principles,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, warned on Wednesday that the fight over the policy “riders,” as they are known, could derail a deal. “We’ll have a hard time coming to an agreement if those on the far right treat the budget as an opportunity to enact a far-ranging social agenda,” he said.
Republican leaders realize that a bill that stops financing for the health care law and eliminates money for Planned Parenthood cannot clear the Senate. But they insist that any final measure will have to contain some policy provisions sought by Republicans, and to bolster their case they are collecting examples of cases when President Obama and Congressional Democrats added such legislation to spending bills.
While Mr. Boehner struggles with party defections, his allies note that he is no novice at cutting big legislative deals, given his past work on major education and pension bills, to name two. And they point out that he began his career as a successful salesman.
Threading the needle on a spending compromise that can satisfy most of his members, protect his leadership position and be signed into law by President Obama may take one of his greatest sales jobs ever.
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