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You should be watching for three different fights over the budget this year. The two that people are mostly expecting is the fight between Democrats and Republicans on cuts and the fight between Democrats and Republicans on funding the implementation of the health-care law. The one that hasn't gotten as much attention -- but that's actually likely to come first -- is the battle between the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, which wants to cut the budget by $100 billion this year, and the more establishment-oriented members, who've set their sights substantially lower. That fight kicked off yesterday when the Republican Study Committee -- which represents two-thirds of House Republicans, including almost 75 freshman -- brought out a package of cuts that'd slash $100 billion from non-defense discretionary spending and bring spending back to 2006 levels in the years after that. But reading their legislation , you can see why more experienced members of

Another day, another deficit-reduction plan. Today's big release will establish the liberal pole in the fiscal-responsibility debate: It's a joint effort from the progressive think tanks The Century Foundation, Demos, and the Economic Policy Institute, and among its other defining characteristics, it delays cuts until unemployment is below six percent, includes carbon and financial-transaction taxes, and fills the Social Security shortfall by taxing high-earners rather than cutting benefits. The plan joins the four other major proposals -- the Simpson-Bowles blueprint , which the commission is tweaking and considering this week, the Bipartisan Policy Center's proposal , the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's plan , and Rep. Jan Schakowsky's alternative -- in the discussion, and rather completes the set. Each plan has its own constituency: BPC's plan impressed wonks with its specificity and deep command of the budget, CFRB's goes t