While Republicans have scheduled a House vote today on a measure that would delay the debt-ceiling deadline for three months, they have indicated they may use the specter of a future default or government shutdown as opportunities to force spending cuts that Obama has so far refused to countenance.

“Instead of short-term management of self-inflicted fiscal crises, the president believes there is now an opportunity to strengthen the economy by putting the nation on a sounder fiscal path,” the White House said yesterday in its official statement which also indicated Obama would still sign the temporary debt- limit bill.

Cuts, Taxes

Obama and Democrats say they will agree to further budget reductions only if paired with additional tax revenues, which Republicans call unacceptable.

Congressional Republicans “are determined to try to take advantage of what they believe to be the leverage afforded by these deadlines to force policy changes they could not get through normal politics,” said Ronald Peters, a political scientist at the University of Oklahoma’s Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. “Once the president and Congress begin to think in terms of leverage points instead of policy, the whole system gets out of kilter.”

It also gets costlier. Unable to agree on annual spending bills to fund the government, Congress and the president have settled for stopgap measures -- known as “continuing resolutions” -- that do little more than maintain current budget levels and breed inefficiencies within agencies.

“Imagine managing -- we are a Fortune 250 company -- where you never know your budget from month to month,” Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank told reporters Jan. 14 while touring the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “It’s incredibly destructive.”

Wasted Money

According to estimates prepared by the House Appropriations Committee, the failure to enact a full-year spending measure last year meant, for instance, that the Defense Department couldn’t award a five-year contract for the CH-47 Chinook Helicopter that would have saved the agency $423 million or a multiyear contract for the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that was projected to save $762 million because the negotiated pricing agreements expired in December.

Reforms to an affordable housing program estimated to save taxpayers $300 million were also pushed off, according to the panel, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection was left with a $315 million shortfall for salaries and expenses that could harm efforts to guard the nation’s borders.