News Analysis

WASHINGTON >> Competing with the din of a nasty presidential primary, the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, has essentially been begging Republicans to unite and become the party of “proposition not opposition.”

But following a brief period of geniality after Ryan was drafted into his current job, he is facing some of the same pressures that brought down his predecessor, John Boehner, over how the government spends its money.

The release of President Barack Obama’s eighth and final budget Tuesday has forced into the open the seething tensions that never really went away after a spending agreement was reached last year, in part to ease Ryan’s transition into the speaker’s suite.

That deal set spending until the end of October of this year, at levels that the president adhered to and Senate Republicans hope to make stick. But a core group of House Republicans who gave Ryan a pass back then now say they want to toss those numbers out like so much flotsam and pass their own budget with far tighter spending restrictions.

“If we are going to pass a Republican budget, it should reflect Republican ideals,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., a member of the Freedom Caucus that is leading the charge. “That means lower spending.”

Ryan does not support the plan, knowing that a tighter budget and conforming appropriations bills will not go very far. Further, Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees have declared that the president’s budget director will not be welcome to testify at their budget hearings, a highly unusual and monumentally partisan snub.

Ryan, himself a former budget chairman, looked away, like a mildly embarrassed father stationed near the sandbox where his kids are throwing sand. But rather than proposing alternatives, Republicans offered a torrent of invective for the president’s budget.

“This isn’t even a budget, so much as it is a progressive manual for growing the federal government at the expense of hard-working Americans,” Ryan said.

As a practical matter, drafting a budget everyone can agree on is not essential to governing. Spending can be set at the current levels, and would expire just a few months before a new Congress started and the next inhabitant of the White House moved in.

But passing a budget — something that Republicans long mocked Democrats for failing to do — sets the stage for pondering the appropriations bills, which Ryan and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, said was their main priority this year.

Ryan is also trying to set a policy agenda, one that he hopes the Republican presidential nominee will take cues from this year.

Another impasse between the speaker, who labors within the reality of divided government, and the most conservative members of the House, who do not abide that reality, highlights the fact that while the congressional elections of 2010 gave Republicans a sturdy hold on the House, their inability to reach internal consensus continues to limit their ability to leave a significant imprint on governing and public policy.

“The leadership team knows that number must be adhered to and would be an act of bad faith on behalf of the House if we were to renege,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “It seems some are insistent about carrying on and setting unrealistic expectations. This is another example of members who are creating a lot of drama when there is absolutely no need to do so.”

For now, Ryan may not care much about the crabbing. He is focused more on messaging principles and plans for a potential Republican president than on the current practicality of governing.

But the tensions are rising to the surface in ways that may not be helpful to either focus. At a recent meeting back home in Arizona, for instance, Rep. Paul Gosar said Ryan had “folded like a cheap suit” on a vote for the omnibus spending bill.

Others are tired of the struggles. As it is, the class of 2010 — which delivered scores of new Republicans to the House — is slowly being winnowed. About half the 87 Republican newcomers elected that year are gone or on their way out the door.

Although their reasons vary, the constant conflagrations, ones that pit old-fashioned defense hawks who approve of some increased spending against the growing class of deficit hawks, have loomed. “It is a complicated process because the former speaker, as he walked out, decided he was going to cut a two-year deal knowing full well they would not have full support of the majority of Republicans,” said Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., who will retire this year.

As such, he said, Ryan “is in the identical box that Speaker Boehner was in.”

Ryan has tried hard to make inroads with the conservative members who felled Boehner. He has included some of them in his informal kitchen Cabinet, which meets weekly, and seeks their counsel on big legislative moves. He has tried to cede as much authority as possible to committee chairmen and expanded the Republican conference to include more of the conservative members.

Last week, he gave a speech at a policy meeting at Heritage Action, a policy group that has long poked at Boehner and Ryan, pleading for Republican unity. But he also took a few shots of his own.

“We can’t let how you vote on an amendment to an appropriations bill define what it means to be a conservative because it’s setting our sights too low,” he said.

The reception was roughly akin to the popularity of lemonade that has been warming for hours on the porch.

“We were excited that Speaker Ryan was able to kick off the conservative policy summit,” said Dan Holler, a spokesman for the group. But he added, “If our goal as conservatives is to put forward a blueprint that contrasts with Hillary and Bernie, we must start with the budget and continue throughout the spring and summer with ambitious and aspirational policy reforms.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company