The showdown over spending in the new Congress is proving to be quite fascinating, with mini-dramas on all sides. It’s important to keep in mind with all of this, however, that these debates concern real people and real jobs.

As we know, there are roughly three hostage-taking events for Republicans to use to force massive spending cuts. You have the continuing resolution on this year’s budget, which ends March 4; the resolution for the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, due by September 30; and the need to increase the nation’s debt limit, which could be required anytime between March and May. Tied in with that, you have needed funding to implement the two signature reform laws passed in the last Congress, health care and financial reform. Republicans have promised to block funding for implementation of both of those, and Democrats are legitimately concerned that this will be the area where Republicans make their stand on shutting down the government, which could result from any or all of these hostage-taking events.

Democratic lawmakers tell The Huffington Post that they increasingly expect Republicans to try and freeze funding for the health care law. Such an attempt would face the same institutional hurdles as a straight repeal vote: a non-compliant Senate and a president wielding a veto pen. But whereas the repeal bill’s death would mean — in practical political terms — absolutely nothing, the inability to pass an appropriations bill could have far-reaching effects.

“They are potentially setting up a situation where they will bring government, all of government, to a screeching halt,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Wednesday. “Not because of the debt ceiling. This is beyond the debt ceiling … If they think they are going to have the end game of their appropriations bills be that they drive health care reform into an early grave … they are literally setting up a full stop for almost everything we will possibly do this year.”

“I am real concerned,” Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas) said. “We do operate on yearly budgets that could exact great harm if they are dedicated to that proposition. You still have to work with the Senate. So what happens when you reach that kind of impasse? We have this gridlock … There is no doubt in my mind that the Republican leadership … has already charted a course. They are very disciplined and very good at what they do.”

The debt limit could also offer an opportunity to stop government functions, though they may just try to get a vote on a balanced budget amendment, which would need a 2/3 majority and 3/4 of the states ratifying. That would be almost as symbolic as the health care repeal bill. The other option would be small increases in the debt limit that would have to get multiple votes, offering more opportunities for spending cuts down the road.

The interesting part of all of this is the tension between the establishment leadership of the House GOP and the tea party right. Already, the far right, boosted by the Republican Study Committee report showing the way to $2.5 trillion in cuts, is pressuring the leadership for an immediate $100 billion in cuts in this budget year. The GOP leadership already backtracked on that, given that half the year is over. Members of Congress are already taking sides on the matter.

The proposal, from the Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc that counts more than two-thirds of House Republicans as members, calls for immediate reductions of at least $100 billion, compared with cuts in the current fiscal year of up to $80 billion being sought by party leaders.

“We want more,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, a freshman from South Carolina [...]

But with a temporary spending measure in place until early March — more than five months into the fiscal year — Republican leaders, including the Budget Committee chairman, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have said that a more realistic goal would be cuts to 2008 levels prorated for the remainder of the fiscal year, or about $60 billion to $80 billion.

Conservative lawmakers, however, said that was not enough.

This does have the makings of a civil war inside the Republican Party. Boehner is trying to stay completely above the fray, claiming not to know what he wants to cut. The party has appointed Paul Ryan as the speaker of the GOP response to the State of the Union, and he’s on the wrong side of this divide, as conservative activists see it. Tea party Republicans are giving no quarter, changing a proposed budget resolution in the House Rules Committee yesterday by eliminating the words “transition to” in a document pledging a return to 2008 fiscal levels for non-security discretionary spending.

It’s definitely more difficult for Republicans to carry out their hostage-taking strategy in the face of such confusion in their own ranks. But it’s also part of their strategy – Boehner and Ryan position themselves as the sensible alternative to the crazed fringe, even as their plans call for massive budget cuts and no chance for revenue increases. If you noticed that I didn’t mention a Democratic strategy in all of this, that’s because I haven’t yet found one.