As Congress comes up on the latest budget deadline,

As Congress comes up on the latest budget deadline, lawmakers seem less daunted by the prospect of going over the "cliff" this time, as partisan positions remain far apart with only three weeks remaining before big cuts hit.

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US Navy/Associated Press

The Pentagon will delay deployment of the USS Harry S Truman, shown last year, amid budget constraints.

March 1 is the day when $85 billion in cuts, known as the "sequester" in Washington parlance, begin to take effect in defense and domestic programs unless Congress acts. But the consequences of inaction are less clear than they were when Congress stared at the original "fiscal cliff," the Jan. 1 series of tax increases and spending cuts that neither Democrats nor Republicans wanted for fear of stunting growth and burdening millions of taxpayers.

Despite warnings about the threat to military readiness, education programs and activities across the government, both parties say that it is likely the deadline will pass without a compromise being reached and that the spending cuts will take effect at least temporarily. The automatic-cut mechanism was set up as part of the 2011 debt-ceiling deal, calling for more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years unless Congress enacted a budget deal to achieve equivalent savings.

The cuts were regarded as so blunt that Congress would never let them take effect. But now lawmakers and aides from both parties, conceding cuts of that magnitude will take effect, are looking for ways to replace them with more-targeted deficit-reduction measures of equal value. That alternative may be enacted when Congress passes separate legislation to extend funding for government operations, which runs out March 27. In the meantime, they believe, federal agencies will find administrative ways to minimize or delay the immediate impact of shrinking budgets.

"It's not going to be as much of a shock as the fiscal cliff," said G. William Hoagland, a former Senate GOP budget adviser who now is a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. "This one definitely would be more of a slope."

In the meantime, a number of proposals have surfaced for replacing the cuts with more-targeted reductions or tax increases.

House Democrats have introduced a bill that would void the cuts and instead cut farm subsidies, eliminate tax breaks and apply the so-called Buffett rule on millionaires—a policy designed to ensure such earners pay a certain minimum effective tax rate. A similar bill is expected to be unveiled by Senate Democrats this week.

House Republicans have twice passed a bill to replace defense cuts with deeper reductions on domestic programs. A House-Senate group of GOP defense hawks last week called for replacing the across-the-board cuts with reductions in the federal workforce.

These proposals are more about sending a message where the two parties stand than a road map to compromise.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D. Ill.), the new chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the biggest obstacle to reaching an agreement on averting the cuts is Republicans' refusal to accept tax increases. Democrats hope that opposition will weaken, especially among defense hawks, perhaps if the revenue-raising effort was recast as "closing tax loopholes."

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), speaking on "Fox News Sunday," cracked the door to that kind of concession. "The consequences are severe," Mr. McCain said of the impact on the Pentagon. "It requires bipartisanship. Will I look at revenue closers? Maybe so. But we've already just raised taxes."

Stressing the GOP's no-more-taxes position, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), speaking on "Meet the Press," said it is up to the president to offer a path to compromise that involves spending cuts only, since Congress approved a big tax increase in January.

The White House issued a report Friday describing the potential damage to government operations, including popular domestic programs like Head Start as well as law enforcement and food inspections. Last week, the Pentagon said it would delay deployment of the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier to the Middle East because of the budget constraints.

Still, the sense of urgency about the March 1 deadline is diminished by the fact that both parties have mixed feelings about what would happen next.

For Democrats, fear of the automatic cuts has been tempered by an important exception written into the law. Top Democratic priorities are spared any cuts under an exemption for Medicaid, Social Security and other safety-net programs. Some conservative Republicans, despite concerns about the Pentagon, view the March 1 cuts as preferable to another round of postponing deficit-reduction efforts or any plan that includes tax increases.

"The most important thing is we finally cut spending in Washington," said Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

Senate Democrats have been trying to devise a proposal that would replace all $85 billion in spending cuts, putting the matter to rest until the end of the year.

But senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, writing Sunday on the White House blog, reiterated the president's suggestion that, absent agreement on such a measure, Congress consider a shorter-term compromise. "With only three weeks until these indiscriminate cuts hit, Congress should find a short term package to give themselves a little more time to find a solution to permanently turn off the sequester," said Mr. Pfeiffer.