Graham Admits It: GOP Civil War On Capitol Hill

… and it’s all because factions within the self-proclaimed “grown-up party” are having a schoolyard donnybrook over the budget:

The congressional push this week to secure the first Republican budget plan in nearly a decade is revealing a chasm between fiscal hawks determined to maintain strict spending caps and defense hawks who are threatening to derail any budget that does not ensure an increase for the military.
“This is a war within the Republican Party,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has vowed to oppose a final budget that does not ensure more military spending. “You can shade it any way you want, but this is war.”

The divisions will be laid bare Tuesday when congressional leaders unveil blueprints that hew to spending limits imposed by the budget battles of 2011.

Unlike legislation, the spending plan Republicans will be creating this week requires only a majority vote in both the House and Senate, cannot be blocked by a filibuster and is not subject to presidential approval or veto.

The struggle over the next three weeks to pass the budget plans represents the most serious test of whether Republican leaders meet their pledge to govern effectively in the majority.

“Oh, we’ll have a budget,” promised Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.

But not until we watch Republican factions duke it out. One major bone of contention remains the so-called “Doc Fix“:

As the House returns Monday for its first legislative week after Republicans caved on the Department of Homeland Security funding bill, GOP leaders are gearing up for their next battle: the Sustainable Growth Rate.

SGR, as it’s more commonly known, deals with the payment formula for Medicare doctors. If the current “patch” expires on March 31, Medicare payments to doctors would be reduced by 21 percent. The only problem is the last time Congress extended the so-called “doc fix,” they didn’t exactly have the votes — a conundrum leaders solved by quickly voice voting the measure before members on the floor even realized what had hit them.

While an internal memo obtained by CQ Roll Call points out that Republicans don’t expect to deal with SGR legislation until the week of March 23, this week will be key in deciding whether Congress does another short-term patch, or whether it can actually get a long-term legislative solution.

For quite a while now, aides and lawmakers have expected another patch — Congress has now opted for a short-term SGR solution 17 times — but there have also been some rumors that a deal could come together where the SGR formula would be repealed and the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be extended. Republicans could win on some yet-to-be-named changes to the Medicare payment system, while the extension — even potential expansion — of the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be a carrot to Democrats.

Fiscal conservatives, however, are already raising flags over the impact of a long-term deal, which could add to the deficit billions more than another short-term patch.

Grab the popcorn…

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