The Democrats also welcomed the massive budget. "It's a bold plan. This is big stroke. This is not a budget about little things," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a member of the House leadership, was quoted by The Washington Post as saying.

"The president knows there are a lot of big lifts in this budget. But in order to turn the economy around and lay the foundation for long-term prosperity, we have to make these tough decisions," Hollen said.

However, the Republicans attacked the plan as a new spending bonanza that fails to address the current crisis and hurts the interests of middle-class families and small businesses.

"It's a hollow number," Sen. Judd Gregg, a senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said. He recently withdrew as Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department. "A 1.4 trillion tax hike is not the solution to our economic woes."

Republican Senator George Voinovich said Obama had "botched spending priorities" and had made "absurd" claims about deficit deduction.

"If there's anything that economists on the left and right agree on, that supply-siders, classic economists and Keynesians agree on, you don't raises taxes in a recession," Republican Representative Paul Ryan said. "The budget is raising taxes in a recession."

Obama's plan, which contains so many difficult-to-digest ideas, would be virtually certain to be significantly redrafted during debates later in the year, the US media said.

"It's going to be a tough row to hoe, but he has large Democratic majorities and a lot of popular support and we're in times of crisis," Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, said.

"So the prospects of him getting much of what he is seeking, while not good, are higher than ... we've seen in the past," he said.

Obama also acknowledged the criticism. He expects the deficit to decline steadily in the coming fiscal years to reach 533 billion dollars by 2013, in line with his promise to cut the deficit by half by the end of his first term.

The president, who inherited more than a 1 trillion dollars deficit when he took office, also warned there were "some hard choices that lie ahead" due to the current economic crisis.

(Xinhua News Agency February 27, 2009)