President Obama’s new budget, with its record-breaking $1.6 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year, is a sign that the administration “is not working to end its drunken-sailor ways,” says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, to National Review Online. “They are playing small ball when they need to be thinking about major-league fiscal solutions.”

Gregg says what concerns him the most is the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that cumulative deficits will reach $6 trillion by 2020 (Brian Riedl predicts a ten-year deficit of $13 trillion), and the president’s “regrettable” avoidance of any “serious” solution. “President Obama’s language doesn’t connect with the substance of his fiscal policy,” says Gregg. “Yes, there are a few fiscally-responsible ideas being proposed, but they’re not enough. For example, with the spending freeze, I say go for it, but we should be doing a hard freeze starting this year. And when it comes to spending cuts, we should be aiming at the programs and entitlements that spend the most money — the big-dollar numbers.”

What would Gregg like to see instead? “First, repeal TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), since the administration is using it as a piggybank, and put that money toward debt reduction. Second, rescind stimulus spending after 2010. Third, stop trying to reduce Medicare spending in order to create major new health-care entitlements.” Gregg would also like to see “broad-based tax cuts to create economic activity, and talk from the president about discipline on his tax-credit proposal.”

“All in all, this budget is an unnecessary and dramatic increase in the size of government that will add innumerable new programs,” he says. “We need to be a solvent country that can pay back its debt and this is not a start. We will be offering amendments in the Senate, and I hope to get some bipartisan support to discipline our fiscal health. I think there will be some responsible votes on the other side of the aisle who will agree.”