Budget season starts in earnest this week, giving Democrats and Republicans the opportunity to score political points in an election-year battle. But though they’ll be vying over issues of great interest to the business community, don’t expect K Street to bring on the full-court press.

To be sure, lawmakers will cast votes this week that will be keenly noted by big business. In the Senate, lawmakers are expected to drive a cavalcade of amendments to the floor on hot-button topics such as taxes, immigration and entitlement-program spending.

Lobbyists for business interests say that budget resolutions, and the battles in the House and Senate to create them, make great political theater and provide the influence industry with a guide to how the congressional year might play out. The budget itself, however, is less important from a lobbying perspective.

Rich Gold, who heads the government affairs practice at Holland & Knight, said the budget “gives you a hunting license” for the authorizing and spending bills that come next.

“It’s not to say that folks don’t spend time on it, but in some ways it’s more important as a political document than it is a real roadmap” for lobbyists to follow throughout the legislative process, Gold said.

The budget, and the amendments proposed on the Senate floor, can provide lobbyists with intelligence on where a particular senator stands on an issue on which he or she has never cast a vote. “These votes are remembered. These are markers for people,” one Republican business lobbyist said.

For appropriations lobbyists, the budget may not even have that value, suggested Jim Dyer, a lobbyist at Clark & Weinstock and a longtime appropriations staffer who said he could not remember ever lobbying on a budget resolution. “The only thing I’m concerned about is the actual size” of the allocations to the appropriations committees, Dyer said.

This year, K Street is uncertain there will even be a budget resolution, given the entrenchment of the parties’ leaders, the dysfunctional relationship with the White House and Capitol Hill, and the encroaching shadow the presidential campaign casts over Washington.

“I think there is a sense, particularly this year, that it’s going to be hard to get a budget resolution,” said Democratic lobbyist and strategist Steve Elmendorf. This is particularly true in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.

While the budget battles serve as a sort of crystal ball for lobbyists, the two parties will use them to highlight their differences and fire up their respective bases.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the floor to set the stage and the tone for the debate, which is expected to culminate in a full-scale “vote-a-rama” Thursday where dozens of votes could be cast.