House Republicans failed to pass the Senate’s budget reconciliation instructions last night, setting up the possibility of Congress adjourning for two weeks without any progress on avoiding a crippling tax hike at the end of this year. The Senate Republican legislation is far from perfect, lacking the serious spending cuts needed to avoid adding to the existing $38 trillion federal debt.

But there will be an opportunity to prevent that from happening later, and internecine fights among Republicans are not the best approach. So, House budget hawks should compromise and use a future opportunity to cut spending when they write tax and spending legislation.