President Barack Obama's ambitious new budget faced bipartisan skepticism Thursday as key senators questioned the administration's long-term budget outlook and the deficits it envisions rising in the middle of the next decade.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended it in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, saying current increases in spending are short term and will have to be substantially reduced to get the country back into fiscal shape.

AP Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Still, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, called the track of future deficits "unsustainable" and singled out Obama's proposal for spending $634 billion on health care over the next 10 years.

"Some of us have a real pause about the notion of putting substantially more money into the health care system when we've already have a bloated system," he said.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., complained that the budget does not tackle rising entitlement spending on Social Security and Medicare. Geithner countered that the administration intends to confront rising health care costs with broad reforms that will significantly reduce Medicare spending.

Geithner is at the center of the president's economic policy, advocating both it's budget proposals and it's tax policies, but also a $700 billion rescue program for the financial sector.

Geithner was facing questions on all those fronts Thursday. By the end of the day, he was scheduled to leave for talks Friday and Saturday in London with finance officials from the Group of 20 nations.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Al., dismissed Geithner's defense of the budget as "campaign mode."

"This budget is based on more taxes, more spending and more debt," Sessions said.

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