Cuts to military veterans benefits in December’s budget deal have outraged veterans groups, but as Congress and President Obama return to Washington this week, the cuts don’t appear to be going anywhere soon.

The budget agreement reached before Christmas puts into place a 1% across-the-board reduction to the cost of living adjustment for military pensions, a move that on principle alone has upset many veterans after 13 years of war. Veterans groups plan to push back against the provisions in the recent budget deal — but so far they’ve been met with radio silence from the White House.

“It is a big surprise for us,” said Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force colonel and director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America. Hayden’s group has had “informational” conversations with the White House about the impact of cutting veterans benefits, he said, but so far has no insight into whether President Obama will come to their aide.

Top military brass below the president have also been a disappointment, Hayden said.

“We’re really kind of surprised the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff] and the Joint Chiefs haven’t come out and said this is wrong,” he said.

But the groups acknowledge the focus will be on Congress even as they hope for the White House aid.

“[Congress] screwed this up, they’re going to have to fix it,” said Tom Tarantino, government affairs director at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“I would like to see the president be more vocal,” Tarantino added, praising the president on his advocacy for veterans and their families. “He’s probably been the most active president we’ve had in 50 years on this stuff. But I think this took everyone by surprise. I would like to see the president continue supporting our community.”

The veterans benefits cuts are proving to be the most controversial part of the bipartisan budget deal. The two prominent partisans who led the crafting of the deal, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), have already agreed to remove the cuts to disabled veterans’ benefits, calling them a “technical error.”

But both Ryan and Murray have taken stands that make it hard to undo the rest of the cuts. Ryan has defended the cuts, saying they’re necessary to prevent the military from suffering sequestration cuts.

Murray, meanwhile, has said she’s open to replacing the cuts with other spending cuts equal to the $6 billion in savings created by retirees’ COLA increase, but is not in favor of dropping the cuts all together.

Hill sources on both sides said the White House has not pressured budget writers to repeal the COLA cuts or to stand by them. But some suggest the president’s signature on the budget deal, which in theory will prevent another round of fiscal crises in 2014, signals that he’s on the side of the cutters.

“President Obama signed the Bipartisan Budget Act into law,” a source familiar with the process said. “[Defense] Secretary Hagel voiced support for the law generally and the need for compensation reform specifically.”

The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the veterans’ complaints.

The COLA cuts don’t go into effect until late 2015, a lead time that veterans’ groups say gives them plenty of time to help allied members of Congress who have condemned the cuts find a way out of them. And though they want the president to lend his voice to their efforts, Obama is so far not the focus when it comes to lobbying Washington to find its $6 billion in savings somewhere else.

A pressure campaign over the cuts launched by the MOAA and its allies before the bill passed last month was restarted Friday with a call for veterans to push their representatives of Congress to repeal the COLA cuts. Before the bill passed, the MOAA campaign and a letter sent by veterans advocate umbrella The Military Coalition included Obama among the recipients of the pressure messaging. In the latest iteration, the president has been left out.

“Our focus is to work on the Hill,” said John Davis, legislative affairs director at the Fleet Reserve Association and co-chair of The Military Coalition.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Obama’s not going to jump out and take a position one way or the other on this until he sees something moving,” he added. “It’s standard operating procedure for presidents. We’re hoping to force his hand.”

Tarantino expects the White House to go along with changes to the benefits cuts if Congress can find them.

“I am not anticipating a lot resistance from the White House. If there is resistance we will push back hard,” he said. “But I’m not anticipating a lot of resistance.”

Update (1:35 p.m.): An administration official provided the following statement to BuzzFeed, which leaves unaddressed the cost of living adjustment:

“The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 represents a compromise between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. As the president made clear, the law doesn’t include everything that he would have liked. Importantly, the law unwinds some of the damaging sequester cuts that have harmed our military, our students, and our seniors, and has acted as a headwind our businesses have had to fight. Without this deal, the Pentagon faced the prospect of additional cuts that would have further degraded our military readiness and support for our troops. The administration supports the effort underway to fix the unintended reduction in COLAs for working-age military retirees with service-related disabilities.”

WASHINGTON — As D.C. enters week two of the government shutdown, House Democrats find themselves in a very strange position: Most of them have now voted against funding nutritional assistance for women, national parks, the District of Columbia, pay for the National Guard, FEMA, veterans benefits, and cancer research at the National Institute of Health.

And they’ll tell you they are just fine with that.

Congressional Democrats have said from the beginning of the shutdown that they would not settle for anything short of a clean funding bill that reopens the entire government without any strings attached. Republicans have responded by introducing a series of narrow bills that would fund specific, highly visible parts of the government and nothing else. The GOP’s strategy is to force Democrats to vote against funding popular programs — thus convincing the public that the party of President Obama is being unreasonable.

“Hard to believe, but 164 Democrats voted against WIC yesterday. They would rather keep gov. shutdown than support WIC,” tweeted Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers after a House vote on funding nutritional assistance program during the shutdown.

Comments like that have left Democrats — who have long championed programs like WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) — infuriated and baffled to say the least. But they are also confident that no amount of Republican messaging can shift public opinion against them as the shutdown drags on.

“Everything that was up is now down, everything that was left is now right. It seems like it’s a bizarre divide and conquer strategy,” said Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. “The tea party is maybe repenting for years of neglecting poor hungry children or veterans. It does feel like we’re in a strange land right now.”

Rep. Keith Ellison, one of the most outspoken progressives in the House, said even the vote to fund WIC was an easy one for him to oppose.

“No, it’s not hard because I know it’s not going anywhere,” he said. “People in my district and districts all over this country know who is for food stamps, they know who is for WIC, they know who is for education. [Republicans] cannot switch their identity that miraculously. They wanted to cut $40 billion out of food stamps two weeks ago. They are trying to get Democrats on bad votes. The American public isn’t stupid.”

“I don’t think anyone buys that Democrats are the heartless ones in Washington,” said Rep. Joe Crowley, a member of the Democratic leadership in the House.

It’s an uphill strategy for the GOP, considering it was Republicans who set the government on the path to a shutdown when they first insisted that any bill to fund the government would have to also defund or delay Obamacare. There’s now no clear plan for an end game. As one Republican lawmaker told The Washington Examiner last week, “We’re not in a situation that has been planned out and war-gamed and plotted.”

But in the short term, the latest strategy has caused a few dozen Democrats to buck party leadership on the piecemeal bills, giving Republicans some bipartisan cover. It also prompted an unforced error by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid when he was asked about funding for cancer patients at a press conference. So far, the House has passed seven mini-funding bills, all of which Reid has said he won’t take up and the president has threatened to veto.

And talk to any Republican and you’ll get virtually the same message : We’ve done something to end the shutdown. They haven’t.

The exception to that pattern is a bill that guarantees furloughed workers will receive back-pay once the shutdown ends, which the president has signaled he will sign. A bill that guarantees pay for the troops was passed and signed into law before the government shutdown.

Democrats said Republicans’ strategy resemble the successful one the GOP employed during the sequester battle, during which progressives effectively caved. This time, they say, they won’t make the same mistake.

“Their strategy for sequester was to try and piecemeal it. They thought they could have their cake and eat it too. They are trying to have that same cake now with the shutdown,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Israel. “The sequester was damaging enough, but a shutdown of the entire government of the United States of America is a completely different matter. We’re not interested in continuing a game.”

The face-off will continue this week with the added pressure of a deadline for hitting the debt ceiling on Oct. 17. House Speaker John Boehner said on ABC this Sunday that the House doesn’t have enough votes to pass clean continuing resolution despite the fact that more than 20 Republican members have signaled they’d vote for one with House Democrats should the bill ever come to the floor.

“Let me issue him a friendly challenge. Put it on the floor Monday or Tuesday. I would bet there are the votes to pass it. We have just about every Democrat, 21 Republicans have publicly said they would. There are many more Republicans who have said that they privately would,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, who followed Boehner appearance on ABC. “So, Speaker Boehner, just vote. Put it on the floor and let’s see if you’re right.”

But if the last week was any indication, that’s not going to happen. Instead, the House will continue to take up the piecemeal bills: On Monday they’ll vote on one to keep the FDA running during the shutdown, and later in the week one that funds Head Start educational programs. Boehner has continued to insist that it is the president and Senate Democrats who are responsible for keeping the government closed because they refuse to negotiate.

“[I]t’s my way or the highway. That’s what he’s saying. Complete surrender and then we’ll talk to you,” Boehner said of Obama. “It’s about having a conversation. I gave the Senate majority leader some advice at the White House about how to proceed. I gave him some advice over a week ago about how to avert this. And yet they refuse to do it.”