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Thats a long way from talk about a large deficit-increasing tax cut, said Ed Lorenzen, of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group committed to educating the public on fiscal issues. Im very curious to see how the White House and conservatives who have been advocating for a tax cut react to this.

The budget calls for a $621.5 billion national defense budget for 2018 and $511 billon for nondefense spending. It also calls for at least $203 billion in cuts over a decade in mandatory spending on programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

In that regard, the proposal is a direct rebuke of Mr. Trump, who promised not to touch those entitlement plans.

The budget also recommends repealing parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank act that ushered in financial regulations after the last recession. And it suggested consolidation of federal work force development programs as a way to generate savings.

House Republicans were optimistic that the plan could become reality. In past years, our proposals had little chance of becoming a reality because we faced a Democratic White House, said Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee and chairwoman of the House Budget Committee. But now with a Republican Congress and a Republican administration, now is the time to put forward a governing document with real solutions to address our biggest challenges.

Despite the differences with Mr. Trumps fiscal vision, Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, praised the outline. The administration urges the House Budget Committee, the full House and the Senate to move forward on a pro-growth budget resolution that supports the administrations goals of a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility and sustained economic growth, Mr. Mulvaney said.

But significant challenges await the House budget effort, and the infighting over health care has shown that Republicans are unlikely to reach an agreement easily on difficult pieces of legislation.

On Monday, Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, who leads the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he did not think the proposed budget could win full House approval. He said he first wanted it to include deeper spending cuts and more details on the principles of tax reform.

The House budget proposal calls for more military spending than the budget produced by the White House. That proposed increase would break the caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Changing that would require the support of Democrats.

The House Budget Committee is scheduled to hold a markup on the resolution on Wednesday, and any bill will have to be reconciled with the budget that the Senate eventually passes.

The Senate also turned its attention to overhauling the tax code on Tuesday, when the Senate Finance Committee held its first tax hearing and questioned a bipartisan panel of former Treasury officials. It also held a separate nomination hearing for David J. Kautter, the nominee for assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy.

The challenges that Republicans face in getting tax reform done were also on display in the Senate.

Democrats assailed Republicans for trying to go around them and urged them to learn the lessons of the health care legislation experience, and work together.

Whats needed is bipartisan tax reform that focuses on progressivity, helping the middle class, cleaning out flagrant tax loopholes, fiscal responsibility, and giving everybody in America the chance to get ahead, said Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee.

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A New GOP Battle Begins as Republicans Look to Pass a Budget - New York Times