Conservatives plan rogue budget to challenge Republicans..

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If House Republican leaders are looking to tighten the nation’s fiscal belt, the budget hawks in the conservative Republican Study Committee want to apply it as a tourniquet.

Their tool: an ambitious fiscal 2012 alternative budget that will challenge the official GOP leadership’s spending plan and once again reveal divides within the Republican Party over how deep to cut the government.

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And there are rumblings from tea party leaders in prominent Republicans’ districts who worry the top brass might not push hard enough to slash expensive entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security when they unveil the party’s 2012 fiscal blueprint.

In an interview with POLITICO, Chris Littleton, a leader of an umbrella organization for tea parties in Ohio, explained his view of the difference between a pair of Buckeye State Republicans who will figure prominently in the budget debate, House Speaker Boehner and RSC Chairman Jim Jordan.

“We can see you got a guy like Jim Jordan, who is also Ohio based, but he’s Republican Study Committee, been a whole lot more aggressive on this, very much supportive of his approach of being more aggressive, and you got Boehner and the — I’ll call them tenured — other Ohio Republican congressmen — who aren’t as aggressive,” Littleton said.

It is against that backdrop that Jordan and his advisers are drafting their alternative — they have yet to release any specific details — but their worldview is certain to be amplified when tea party groups rally outside the Capitol Thursday afternoon.

If history is a guide, there’s little to no chance that the House will adopt the RSC budget. Instead, a large bloc of Republicans would be expected to vote for it as an amendment to the party’s budget and then, grudgingly, vote for the leadership version.

But the threat of internal discord is serious enough that GOP budget aides met with RSC staff late Monday to compare notes.

“We’re now caught in this squeeze from both the left and right,” said a top GOP leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It doesn’t give us much room to maneuver.

http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=1&threadid=5264151

:popcorn: