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Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

After a 12-hour slog of deliberations on Wednesday, the House Republican budget looked readyto make it out of committee. It would be a minor victory for Republicans on a day when very little had gone right and the Senate's Obamacare repeal had gone spectacularly wrong.

Then Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.)spoke up, sayinghe had a most ungentlemanly request:Id like to offer an amendment.

This wasn't supposed to happen. As Sanford himself noted, Republicans had a gentleman's agreement to pass the budget out of committee without any fuss and without any amendments.

But he broke the deal anyway,anothersign of how much disagreement there is in the GOP, even over taxes and spending. It's a big part of the reason that President Trump is six months into his presidency and has zero major legislative achievements.

Sanford's amendment would forbid Republicans from enactingthe controversialborderadjustment tax (BAT), a proposal totax U.S. importers and give tax breaks to U.S. exporters.

The BAT is supposed to encourage companies to make more stuff in the United States (and hopefully hire more American workers). It would also raise about $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Tax Foundation, a think tank.

Big retailers are lobbying hard against the BAT, as companies like Walmart that are major importers would be forced to pay the tax, likely passing the added costs on to consumers.

On the flip side, companies that export a lot such as Boeing and Caterpillarlikethe BAT. So do many small manufacturers who want to see Trump take action to make goods from overseas more expensive. Supporters point out that most other countries, including China, Germany and Canada, have a BAT or something very similar to it.

Rep.Diane Black (R-Tenn.), chair of the budget committee, grimaced as Sanford was speaking. She jumped in quickly to remind him, in a stern tone, his amendment wasn't preapproved and thus wouldn't be voted on.

Black has spent months carefullycrafting the 2018 budget blueprint so it would satisfy the moderate wing of her party that didn't want dramatic cuts to programs that benefit seniors and the poor and the Freedom Caucus, which wants deep spending reductions to pay for tax cuts for businesses and individuals.

Sanford is a member of the Freedom Caucus. He's also a former South Carolina governor andrepresents the city of Charleston, a major U.S. port that is thriving because of goods arrivingon ships from Europe, China and elsewhere.

I have a range of concerns about the BAT, Sanford said. This amounts to a $1.2 trillion tax that ultimately would be borne by the consumer.

Black refused to allow the amendment to be considered, shooting it down on a technicality. She got her wish and the House Republican budget did pass out of her committee last night (Sanford voted yes).

But the BAT spatisn't over.It's just headedto a bigger arena: the full House of Representatives.

The budget does not explicitly mention the BAT. But it also doesn't rule it out. The language in the tax section is purposefully vague.Republicans need money for their tax cuts. The BAT is one way to get it, and several GOP leaders, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, like the idea.

Trump has promised large tax cuts (the biggest in U.S. history, he claimed). But House Republicans insist that any tax cuts won't add trillions to America's debt. They want deficit neutral tax reform.

The only way to make that math work is massive reductions in spending or finding new ways to generate massive amounts of new revenue including, possibly, viathe BAT.

The failure of the Republican health care plan makes the math even more complex. House Republicans were already counting the reduced costs from slashing Medicaid in their budget. Now they have to plug that hole as well.

Expect a lot more ungentlemanly battles.

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Republicans got 'most ungentlemanly' with each other over the budget last night - Washington Post