Fiscal fights: Who will blink first?

Speaker John Boehner’s House Republicans and President Barack Obama — joined by congressional Democrats — want entirely different things out of the three-step fiscal fight that will take place over the next 90 days.

Congress’s next battle will be to keep the government open after March 27 while simultaneously stopping massive spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government programs that take hold March 1.

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And that fight shows how steep the hill is to climb. The GOP wants to replace automatic spending cuts with changes to mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid without any additional tax increases. Obama and Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for additional revenue — which the GOP refuses to countenance after the fiscal cliff deal — and are serious about protecting entitlement programs.

But there’s almost no way for both sides to get what they want — setting the nation on a course to a possible government shutdown or deep cuts to government programs that no one wants, unless someone blinks.

“We support comprehensive tax reform to eliminate loopholes, lower rates and create jobs, but in terms of additional revenue, that issue is closed,” a senior GOP leadership aide said Thursday.

But just as important as the dates is how the key players — House Republicans and Obama (with congressional Democrats right behind him) — define success and their strategy in achieving their desired goals. Whether they can ultimately reach agreement will determine whether the nation regains sounder fiscal footing and avoid the threat of more inside-the-Beltway fiscal crises, shutdown scares and debt downgrades.

The White House

How it Defines Success: The White House wants to be done with the deficit-reduction debate.

After securing $2.5 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases over the past two years, Obama would like to use the fiscal fights to push the total deficit-reduction number on his watch up to $4 trillion, which many budget experts say is the target for stabilizing the country in the near term.

He would then declare victory and move on with his ambitious second-term agenda.

The last thing Obama wants is to revisit these issues every few months, hampering both the economy and his hopes of tackling immigration, guns and climate change. And the next batch of fiscal deadlines gives Obama his best hope for crafting a solution.

But it would come at a cost to his party and its cherished entitlement programs.

Having voted earlier this month for $600 billion in tax hikes, Republicans will drive a hard bargain on any plan to balance the budget that includes more revenue. That puts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in the cross hairs. And Obama is open to entitlement reform but only if it passes with revenue-raising tax reform, according to an official familiar with White House thinking. That’s a no-go for House Republicans.

Even modest attempts to cut entitlement benefits would test Obama’s sway with Democrats. He talks about shared sacrifice from both parties but hasn’t reached the point where he’s had to pressure rank-and-file lawmakers to cross their red line on sacred issues.

That’s something Boehner did with his own party on the fiscal cliff deal, and he lost — most House Republicans opposed that legislation.