WASHINGTON - House Republicans have unleashed an early onslaught of attacks against President Biden and his 2024 budget, as they ready their own plan seeking billions of dollars in spending cuts - and steel themselves for a political standoff over the country's finances.

The president's blueprint for the next fiscal year, slated for release on Thursday, is expected to preserve funding for his top economic priorities. It aims to shore up the future of Medicare and reduce the deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade, as Biden has promised publicly, reiterating his commitment to new tax increases targeting billionaires and some corporations.

But the fate of Biden's budget falls to an increasingly restive Congress, where some Republicans already have rejected the document outright. In a sign of the two parties' competing, conflicting visions, GOP leaders have held firm in their bid to slash federal health, science, education and labor spending next fiscal year - and have hardened in their opposition to the new taxes that the White House seeks.

"We're going to see a budget that continues to increase taxes, and continues to spend taxpayer moneys, and continues to have this 15th consecutive month of inflation persist as a result of that," said Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the leader of the House Budget Committee, who is drafting his party's plan.

The early political barbs set the stage for a higher-stakes showdown this summer, when the U.S. must act to raise or suspend the debt ceiling - the legal limit on how much the government can borrow to pay its bills. Taking control of the House in January, Republicans pledged to seize on the fast-approaching deadline as a bargaining chip, raising the prospect that a protracted spending battle could cause a significant disruption to the economy.

The budget fight comes at a perilous time for the country's finances. The government's debt has ballooned in recent years, and the discrepancy between what Washington raises and spends is expected to grow by nearly $19 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which released its latest analysis last month.

Democrats and Republicans alike have contributed considerably to that gap, which only has worsened this year as prices have risen and interest rates have spiked, making it more expensive for the government to borrow money. Adding to the challenge, two of the largest federal programs - Social Security and Medicare - do not collect enough in payroll taxes from workers to cover current and future retirees' benefits. The two entitlements could face an insolvency crisis over the next decade, the CBO has warned, threatening steep cuts to seniors' aid.

Seizing on the dour report, Republican lawmakers have pledged a return to austerity, even if they must bargain over the country's credit to accomplish their aims. To further highlight the issue, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has invited Phillip Swagel, the director of the CBO, to brief lawmakers from both parties on the country's fiscal state later this week, and GOP leaders prepare to hold a battery of upcoming hearings on federal spending.

Biden, for his part, plans to head to Philadelphia on Thursday to tout his own vision. Previewing the budget with reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday stressed that Biden "understands his fiscal responsibility," including the need to address the country's debt. She added that Biden's speech would detail his efforts to "invest in America, continue lowering costs for families, protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, reduce the deficit and more."

Biden's budget is expected to propose cutting the debt by $2 trillion over the next decade, twice as much as the president proposed in past spending plans. The task has proved politically challenging for the White House, which has faced pressure from Democrats' liberal ranks to revive the parts of its agenda that have not become law - including a push for universal prekindergarten and new money for child care and eldercare.

Privately, White House aides considered changing the scope of those original plans to preserve them in the budget yet save money, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. But some of the savings in the president's blueprint are expected to come from new revenue, including a quadrupling of a new tax on companies that buy back their stock and a special surtax on billionaires.

Biden endorsed a version of the billionaire tax as part of his original economic package, known as the Build Back Better Act, though Democrats ultimately ended up adopting a scaled-down version without it. Republicans vehemently opposed the idea - and unanimously voted against the final measure, called the Inflation Reduction Act, last year.

In doing so, many top Republicans have blasted Biden's broader, expected budget this week, arguing it is likely to stop far short of what is necessary to address the country's financial imbalances. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), a senior Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, lamented that the $2 trillion in potential savings that Biden hopes to achieve is "not an effort" to address the breakneck pace of borrowing identified by CBO.

"The wheels are coming off," Schweikert said of the country's fiscal health.

Republicans similarly have rejected Biden's tax proposals, anticipating he would reprise his longtime push to unwind the tax cuts that GOP lawmakers adopted under President Donald Trump in 2017. Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), the leader of the tax-focused House Ways and Means Committee, said the country does not have a "revenue problem," as he blamed Democrats for the country's worsening fiscal predicament.

"We do have a fiscal crisis that we need to address," he said. "What's the solution to it? It's definitely not to increase taxes and spend more money ... but that's what [Biden's] budget will do."

Smith is set to convene his panel for a field hearing on the economy Tuesday in Oklahoma before returning to Washington to grill Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen on Friday. Republicans plan to press her on the debt ceiling, the president's budget and the administration's broader policy work, including its efforts to ramp up enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service.

Yellen has urged lawmakers to act swiftly and raise the country's borrowing cap, now that the Treasury has started taking so-called "extraordinary measures" to avert a fiscal calamity. Yet Republicans remain committed to using the deadline as leverage for significant changes to spending, including hard limits on agencies' budgets in future fiscal years. Smith, meanwhile, said his panel has not ruled out considering legislation that would prioritize some federal payments over others in the event of a default, adding that everything is "on the table."

Behind the scenes, top Republicans also have continued preparing their own budget, led by Arrington, whose committee will set overall spending levels for lawmakers who oversee federal appropriations. GOP leaders have promised steep cuts beginning next fiscal year in a blueprint that could erase the deficit within a decade.

For the 2024 fiscal year, the reductions aim to reset spending back to the levels adopted two years ago. Across federal agencies, the cuts could total $150 billion, Arrington said, which Republicans plan to extract from domestic programs while sparing defense. The approach could also unwind some of Biden's recently enacted policies, from tax credits to spur green energy to new money meant to combat tax cheats.

One of the panel's members, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), said some conservatives are pushing for even greater savings - perhaps as much as $200 billion, he said in an interview, adding that lawmakers have started assembling potential cuts targeting "woke" policies under Biden.

"His words have no meaning," said Norman, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, later adding of the White House: "Their whole program and their whole vision is more taxes, and more government, and we're the opposite of that."

Beyond that, though, Republicans face a monumental task: They must identify roughly $16 trillion in savings to meet their own goal to balance the budget in 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for deficit reduction. If they spare Social Security, Medicare and the Pentagon, as party leaders have promised, their plan would require them to slash a seemingly unthinkable 78 percent of all other federal spending, the CRFB found last month.

"That's the goal. We're still working toward that goal," Arrington said about balancing the budget over the decade. "I think we have a commitment and a desire to rein in the spending, and I think the balanced budget in 10 years is an ideal."

But, he added: "The most real thing we can do, and the most, I think, important thing we can do to rein in spending is have next year's budget reduce deficit spending. If we can't do that, it doesn't matter what your 10-year budget goals are."

In many ways, the stalemate marks a return to the fiscal fights of decades past. In 2011, ascendant "tea party" conservatives in a GOP-led House sought to force massive spending cuts on President Barack Obama, resulting in a series of budget battles that brought the government dangerously close to a default. The protracted bickering ultimately cost taxpayers about $1 billion and cut the country's credit rating, until the two sides worked out a deal that slashed federal agencies and programs - and limited future spending in ways that Democrats saw as damaging.

In the years to follow, Democrats repeatedly supplied the votes needed for Republicans to raise the debt ceiling, even providing their support when they opposed Trump's tax-and-spending policies. But Republicans at times threatened to withhold their votes once Biden entered the White House, leading to a series of tense showdowns over the past two years that could have caused a government default - a calamity that economists say would cost the economy millions of jobs.

Breaking with Obama, Biden has stressed he is not willing to haggle over the country's credit, insisting that Republicans should raise or suspend the debt ceiling without conditions. Many Democrats have supported the president's approach: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the leader of the tax-focused Senate Finance Committee, said Republicans had "manufactured a fiscal crisis," as he cited Trump's own words that lawmakers should not use the debt ceiling to force negotiations.

But Biden and McCarthy still huddled at the White House last month, a gathering that administration officials later described as cordial and wide-ranging. Exiting the meeting, though, the two men faulted each other for failing to release a budget, a move that marks the formal start of the annual appropriations process.

With the first of those documents set to arrive Thursday, many Democrats and Republicans said they found themselves bracing for the real fight on the horizon.

"We campaigned on the need for fiscal responsibility and the wastefulness of the [Democratic] Congresses," said Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), a member of both the budget and appropriations panels, "and members are very clear-eyed about the need for fiscal responsibility and the actions that's going to require."

- - -

The Washington Post's Jeff Stein, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.