For three years, Congressional leaders have relied on tactical maneuvers, sleights of hand and sheer gimmickry to move the nation from one fiscal crisis to the next â with little strategy to deal with the actual problems at hand. Medicare and Social Security continue to swell with an aging population. Health care costs grow. A burdensome tax code remains unchanged, and economic revival is shadowed by the specter of Washingtonâs crisis-driven mismanagement.  Now, with a government shutdown looming at monthâs end and a crippling default on the nationâs debt possible by mid-October, Congressional leaders may have run out the string on legislative trickery. Conservative Republicans in the House have declared they will not go along with any more gimmickry from their leadership. Democrats have vowed they will not help Republican leaders out of their jam without some easing of spending cuts. And a way forward â to keep the government operating and solvent, and to protect the international economy from a default-driven shock wave â is nowhere to be found as the House is set to vote this week on a stopgap spending plan.  âWhat is causing this is the inability, at least to this date, of our nationâs leaders â in the House and White House â to make good decisions, timely decisions, that put our country first,â said Representative Scott Rigell, Republican of Virginia. âItâs really no surprise that weâre in this bind.â  President Obama joined the fray Monday, castigating Republicans for the latest budget crisis but âhoping that a light bulb goes off.â  âWhat happens here in Washington makes a difference,â he said at a White House event commemorating the fifth anniversary of the financial crisis that helped propel him to the presidency. âWhat happens up on Capitol Hill is going to help determine not only the pace of our growth but also the quality of jobs, the quality of opportunity for this generation and future generations.â  Last week, with the body politic focused on Syria, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, trotted out his answer to the latest fiscal morass. First, the House would pass stopgap funding legislation to keep the government open until mid-December â with a companion clause that would strip all funding to implement President Obamaâs health care law. Sure, the Senate could simply ignore the health care provision, but Mr. Cantor assured House conservatives he would come back with an increase in the governmentâs borrowing limit that would delay the health care law for one year.  The conservativesâ answer? A boisterous and resounding no.  âCertainly weâve often used insider Washington rules and tools â some would call them gimmicks â to protect people from hard votes,â said Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina. âThatâs been part of Washington a long time. But what weâre seeing here is an unwillingness to accept this as a first step. You canât start with a complete surrender.â  Just five scheduled legislative days stand between the House and a government shutdown. House Republican leaders and their allies say there is still time to persuade their recalcitrant backbenchers to go along with the Cantor plan, or some variant of it. House Republicans will meet Wednesday to hash over their options. But the divisions that have bedeviled Speaker John A. Boehner since he took the gavel in 2011 are back in force.  âItâs fair to say it looks a little gimmicky, but at least it would prevent a government shutdown,â said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania who backs the plan. âItâs important that Republicans stop pretending that Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader and Mitt Romney is the president,â he said, referring to Mr. McConnell of Kentucky, who as leader of Senate Republicans heads the minority party. Conservatives say they are tired of losing, and they are being egged on by activist organizations that are demanding a hard line. From his new perch heading the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, former Senator Jim DeMint has demanded an end to âpretend votesâ and âgimmicks.â The conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III is rallying supporters around legislation that would strip all funds from the Affordable Care Act immediately, saying heâll accept no less.  The Club for Growth, a political action committee not bashful about mounting primary challenges to Republican lawmakers from the right, says it will put a black mark on the record of any lawmaker who votes even to bring the Cantor plan to the House floor. And an expanding base of Internet-wired Tea Party ground troops is keeping the pressure on.  âWeâre pushing back on these gimmicks that used to be the coin of the trade in Washington,â said Michael A. Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundationâs political arm. âI think itâs exciting.â  Republican leaders can be forgiven for their shell shock. For three years such activists have generally looked the other way as Republicans finessed a path from crisis to crisis. In 2011, the House took the nation to the brink of its first-ever debt default, despite warnings from economists that such a move could plunge the global economy into recession.  The way out, in part, was a special select committee tasked with producing a bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit by around $4 trillion over 10 years. The supercommittee failed, but the legislation that produced it did lift the debt ceiling.  To do it, however, Mr. McConnell had to dream up another sleight of hand, a two-step process that allowed President Obama to raise the debt ceiling himself, then gave Congress a vote to voice its disapproval. Even if that disapproval could pass Congress, it could be vetoed by the president. Thus the governmentâs borrowing limit would rise without any lawmaker having to vote explicitly to do it.  Earlier this year, House Republicans devised another plan to raise the debt ceiling while extracting only a token concession. That concession was the No Budget, No Pay Act, which would have impounded the pay of members of Congress if they failed to pass a budget. Senate Democrats complied, passed a budget, and have berated the House for the past five months for refusing to even try to resolve the vast differences between the Houseâs spending and tax plan and the Senateâs.  The House has also all but given up on passing detailed spending bills to comply with its budget.  âIf this is our approach to governance, we are in deep trouble,â Mr. Rigell fumed.  With the clock ticking, frustration with what Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin, called âall these fiscal cliffs and this dance we go into all the timeâ may be reaching a crescendo.  âWe just need to find a path forward, and we have to get off these conversations about this small stuff,â Mr. Ribble said. âItâs time we start to deal with the real issues.â
With a possible government shutdown and debt default on the horizon, conservatives are rallying to prevent their leaders from using the maneuvers that have warded off fiscal crises in the past.