"This is a defining moment"

With a rally planned for Thursday by Tea Party activists to encourage Republicans to hold their ground, some lawmakers said they believed that backing away from cuts already approved by the House would tell voters that Republicans have reverted to legislative business as usual.

“This is a defining moment,” said Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana.

But other fiscal hawks said it might be time to end the dispute, which is over how much government spending to approve through Sept. 30, and move on to more consequential fights over increasing the federal debt limit and writing the budget for 2012.

“There are a lot of people who know this is small ball and are ready to get to the debt limit increase,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona. “A lot of us recognized we were not going to end up with $100 billion in the final product.”