Lawmakers sparred Sunday during talk shows about the national debt, for starters. Even as the debt races toward $14 trillion, some Republicans said they would oppose extending the debt limit beyond the current $14.3 trillion, although such a move could shut down the government.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who will head the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promised on Fox News Sunday that Republicans and the Obama administration are “going to be in a constant battle over jobs and the economy.”

While Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota, said pushing a repeal of health care through the House was worth it even though it would face a veto from President Barack Obama if it managed to pass the Senate.

Another Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “I think you’re going to see the fight on Obamacare across the board in the House and the Senate to try to de-fund the Obamacare bill and to start over.”

Republican congressional leaders may also have to gird for some aggravation of their own from some of the Tea Party candidates elected this fall.

Republicans pledged Sunday to devote themselves to balancing the budget over all else.

Republicans elected to Congress with the help of Tea Party support said Sunday that when they start their new jobs on Wednesday they hope to change the culture of spending in Washington as they prepare to get sworn in this week. They said Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid earmarks and other items will all be on the table for serious reform.

But Tea Party leaders have already expressed concern. Although more than 40 candidates supported by the Tea Party were elected to the House and Senate — which means roughly half of the incoming Republicans were elected with “Tea Party” support — they lost a campaign to install their favorites as chairmen on two powerful House committees.

Their goal is to keep the new members focused on the movement’s priorities — slashing federal spending, opposing all tax increases, repealing the health-care bill and adhering to its interpretation of the Constitution — and out of the clutches of Washington.

This will be no easy task. The passionate and sometimes controversial activists of the Tea Party are running headlong into a familiar collision: Movement idealism meets Inside-the-DC-Beltway deal-making.

Many grass-roots movements have learned how hard it is to remain outsiders in a place run by insiders and still accomplish something, said Martin Cohen, a professor of political science at Virginia’s James Madison University, who is studying the Tea Party movement and its parallels to the rise of the Christian right in the 1980s and 1990s, which emerged from the grass roots in the late 1970s but eventually lost its independence as leaders were absorbed into the party establishment.

“If I had to bet on whether they would change Washington or whether Washington would change them, I would bet on Washington,” Cohen told reporters.

Tea Party leaders say they’re prepared to avoid the pitfalls that have hobbled past political movements. They argue their activists are more engaged and committed. They’re not advocating a single issue but a bigger campaign to “restore America.” And perhaps most notable, they’ve proved a willingness to punish straying lawmakers at the ballot box.