The Kansas Statehouse in Topeka.

Topeka ? Kansas lawmakers are expected to announce Wednesday whether they will continue working through the end of the week or adjourn the regular session early after making little progress so far on a budget, school finance package or a tax package that will be needed to fund them over the next two years.

“There’s one possibility that a tax plan may come together yet this week,” House Republican Leader Don Hineman said early Tuesday. “If it does, we’ll stick around and try to work through that and possibly adopt a tax plan before we go home. By the end of (Tuesday), we’ll know whether that’s a possibility or not.”

Republican leaders from the House and Senate went into a meeting around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday with Gov. Sam Brownback, hoping to reach consensus on a tax package that will be needed to close huge projected funding shortfalls over the next two years.

That meeting lasted until after 6 p.m., and leaders who were there did not indicate they had reached an agreement. House and Senate GOP leaders then went to meet with members of their own caucuses.

Afterward, a spokeswoman for Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican, said the Senate’s plan was to continue working through Friday, although that plan could be subject to change.

Senate Vice President Jeff Longbine of Emporia said after he left the meeting that it was unlikely lawmakers would agree on a tax package this week, but said they may continue meeting at least through Thursday to get through a number of bills that have come out of conference committee.

“I think there’s probably too many bills unfinished,” he said. “And I’m not saying tax bills, but there’s probably too many unfinished. The plan right now is to work through Friday, but if we finish up on Thursday, we may take Friday off.”

The one piece of critical legislation that appears to be moving through is the so-called “rescission” bill that closes a projected funding shortfall of about $293 million for the final few months of the current fiscal year.

A conference committee reached agreement on that bill last week and the Senate passed it early Tuesday. The House is expected to vote on it Wednesday.

Also, the Senate has passed its own version of a two-year budget plan, which includes restoring funding from the 4 percent Medicaid reimbursement rate cut, as well as a portion of the cuts to higher education that Brownback ordered last year.

But neither chamber made much progress on a tax package since an attempt to override Brownback’s veto of an earlier tax bill failed in late February.

The Senate tax committee on Tuesday endorsed a bill that conservatives in the Legislature have been pushing, a so-called “flat” tax in which everyone would pay income tax of 4.6 percent on their taxable income, starting in 2018. It would also repeal what is known as the “LLC loophole” that allows certain business owners to pay no taxes on their business income.

Further, it would lower the sales tax rate on food by a cent, to 5.5 percent, starting July 1, 2017, and would continue to ratchet down the sales tax on food whenever total sales tax revenues grow beyond certain benchmark figures.

Wagle’s spokeswoman said no decision has been made about whether to debate that bill on the floor of the Senate this week.

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, who is the ranking Democrat on the tax committee, said it would raise an estimated $295 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1, and $415 million in the fiscal year after that — far less than what the state needs to close its projected funding shortfalls.

“To me, it’s not serious because outside of repealing the business nonwage income (exemption), it generates very little additional dollars on the W-2 side,” Holland said, referring to the federal W-2 tax form that wage earners fill out to determine the amount of taxes taken out of their wages each pay period.

Lawmakers also must pass a new school finance formula for K-12 public schools this year. Last week, a House committee working on that formula appeared to be close to an agreement, but the committee did not meet either Monday or Tuesday of this week.

Conservatives in the House appeared frustrated that the plan coming out of that committee essentially would have reinstated many parts of the formula that lawmakers repealed in 2015, when conservatives had solid majorities in both chambers, before they lost those majorities in the 2016 elections.

Rep. Larry Campbell, R-Olathe, who chairs that committee, announced Tuesday that the group would meet on Wednesday, but that it would not yet take a vote to advance the bill to the full House.

Those developments came in the middle of what has been a frustrating week for Democrats and moderate Republicans.

On Monday, their attempt to override Brownback’s veto of a Medicaid expansion bill fell three votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority.

And on Tuesday, Democrats failed in their attempt to force a gun bill onto the floor of the House so they could offer amendments to scale back requirements that will take effect July 1 for most public facilities, including college and university campuses as well as publicly owned health care facilities, to allow people to carry concealed firearms in those buildings.

When lawmakers adjourn this week, they will be gone for about three weeks. During that time, state budget officials will release new, updated revenue forecasts for the next two fiscal years. Then they will return May 1 to finish work on a budget that balances to those numbers, and any new tax plan they might approve.