Mr. Obama used his budget for the fiscal year 2012 and beyond to make the case for selectively cutting spending while increasing resources in areas like education and clean energy initiatives that hold the potential for long-term payoffs in economic growth. With this year?s deficit projected to hit a record, $1.6 trillion, he laid out a path for bringing down annual deficits to more sustainable levels over the rest of the decade.
Republicans said it was not nearly enough to address chronic fiscal imbalances and reduce the role of the federal government in the economy and society.
Neither party has put forward specific proposals to begin grappling with the most pressing long-term budget problem: the huge costs in the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs as the population ages and medical costs rise, a bill that could overwhelm the government and crimp the economy if not addressed.
?We?re doing things that are the most painful and of least long-term economic value because we?re not willing to do the things that everybody, at least privately, agrees are necessary,? said Vin Weber, a Republican Party strategist and former congressman.
Nonetheless, with his budget, Mr. Obama was pivoting from the emphasis in his first two years on costly efforts to revive the economy. He said his plan would reduce the total projected deficits over the next decade by $1.1 trillion, or about 10 percent.
His budget, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, would cut spending for an array of domestic programs, including community services and environmental protection, and reduce the Pentagon?s previously proposed budget by $78 billion over five years. At the same time, it would make room for spending increases for education, infrastructure, clean energy, innovation, as well as research.
?Even as we cut out things that we can afford to do without, we have a responsibility to invest in those areas that will have the biggest impact in our future,? Mr. Obama told students at a science and technology school in Baltimore. ?And that?s especially true when it comes to education.?
On Capitol Hill, Republicans rejected Mr. Obama?s talk of budgetary investments, calling them runaway spending by another name, and blamed him for the fact that the projected deficit for this fiscal year will set a record. But that deficit projection swelled mostly because of the costly tax cuts deal that Republicans negotiated with Mr. Obama in December.
On Tuesday, Republicans plan to begin three days of debate on a package slashing at least $61 billion from nonsecurity domestic spending just in the remaining seven months of the current fiscal year.
In an interview, Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, accused the president of ?an abdication of leadership? for not being bolder in trying to reduce the long-term debt, as a majority of Mr. Obama?s own bipartisan fiscal commission recommended in December.
While Republicans will not write their own budget for the fiscal year 2012 and beyond until April, making comparisons with Mr. Obama?s agenda difficult for now, their assault on 2011 spending showed how much deeper the new House majority is prepared to cut. It is shrinking or eliminating programs for education, environmental and energy initiatives, health services, border security, law enforcement and much more, both to downsize government and reduce deficits and to make room for more tax cuts.
Yet even as Republicans criticized Mr. Obama as fiscally timid, dissension in their ranks over those spending cuts suggested their challenges in writing their own budget. For the past two years, with Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, Republicans could attack freely without any responsibility to produce alternatives.