Can Congress function as a legitimate partner with the executive branch in dealing with the nation’s fiscal problems?

The next two weeks offer yet another test following two years of kicking the can down the road.

The last time President Obama and lawmakers tackled deficit reduction, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 — signed into law on Jan. 2 — increased the budget deficit for this year by $330 billion, and through fiscal 2022 by almost $4 trillion, says the Congressional Budget Office.

Though that action postponed the “fiscal cliff” and is known for raising taxes on those earning more than $450,000 a year, what the measure primarily did was make permanent the lower Bush taxes for 98 percent of Americans.

What is looming now is the March 27 deadline for agreeing on funds to keep the government operating through the remainder of fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30. Right now, $984 billion to do just that is contained in the 269-page fiscal 2013 continuing resolution (CR) that the House passed last week.

The House CR contains the fiscal 2013 appropriations bills for the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments — but not for other federal departments or agencies, essentially limiting them to their 2012 funding levels. In addition, all are subject to sequestration, the across-the-board cuts in defense and non-defense discretionary spending. Those were the result of the 2011 Budget Control Act, another botched attempt to cut the deficit.

About $59 billion worth of fiscal 2013 sequester cuts are accounted for in the House-passed CR. If no legislative changes land before March 27, an additional $26 billion will have to be cut from fiscal 2013 spending before Oct. 1.

When a majority of the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, voted for the sequester in August 2011, the thinking was that in 2012, members of Congress would not be so stupid as to allow such a mindless approach to occur.

They were, it did, and the nation is paying for it, unless some solution is found.

Meanwhile, the White House is taking heat from Republicans and the news media for not sending Congress the president’s fiscal 2014 budget by Feb. 4, as required by law. But what budget figure should the Obama administration realistically use? Congress has yet to agree on the overall fiscal 2013 budget. Should the White House use the $1.066 trillion for discretionary spending in the 2011 budget act, or should that figure be lowered an additional $100 billion to reflect sequester’s impact — assuming Congress does nothing about sequestration in the next two weeks?

If Congress doesn’t change the 2011 budget act limits or the sequester, and the Obama administration proposes a larger budget figure, that could set the stage for another round of cuts. That’s assuming, of course, an Obama budget passed.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday, “I don’t have a date certain for you on the president’s budget . . . It’s being worked on.” The first or second week in April would appear logical for the Obama budget to appear, but what it contains may still depend on what Congress does in the next 14 days.

Now it’s now up to the Senate to act.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Thursday that she has been working with the panel’s ranking Republican, Richard C. Shelby, Ala., on the Senate’s CR.