GOP critics hit Obama's $3.8 trillion budget

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama feels he has struck just the right budget balance between providing more short-term support for the economy while putting forth a long-term plan to get control of the government's soaring budget deficits.

Republicans vehemently disagree, attacking his 2013 budget as a replay of the failed economic policies they say have resulted in an economy growing at subpar rates and government debt soaring to record highs.

Both parties would agree that Obama's latest budget, released Monday, will feature heavily as a debating point in the November elections to determine who will win the White House and whether Democrats or Republicans win control of the House and Senate.

Republican Mitt Romney, who is campaigning for the GOP nomination to challenge Obama in the fall, called the budget Obama released Monday "an insult to the American taxpayer." GOP candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are all advocating bigger spending cuts to control the deficits, and all the GOP candidates oppose Obama's tax increases.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the administration's chief economic spokesman, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday in what will be the first of four congressional appearances this week by Geithner to explain and defend Obama's budget plan.

Judging from the GOP reaction Monday, Geithner could be in for some sharp questioning.

"The president's budget is a gloomy reflection of his failed policies of the past, not a bold plan for America's future," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. "The president offered a collection of rehashes, gimmicks and tax increases that will make our economy worse."

Democrats in Congress were for the most part supportive of the president's proposals. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Republicans forget that Obama inherited an economic mess when he took office, with the economy struggling to emerge from the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

"The reality is that the president inherited a fiscal and economic disaster," Conrad said Monday. "The only true way forward is through a comprehensive and balanced deficit-reduction agreement. We need to come together on a plan that modernizes our tax system, reforms our entitlement programs and attacks wasteful spending."

Republicans are arguing for deeper spending cuts and a frontal assault on the biggest drivers of the deficit, the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid, whose already sizable costs are projected to double in future years as baby boomers retire.