FACTBOX: Presidential candidates reaction to budget

(Reuters) - Here are reactions of the two Democratic presidential candidates to President George W. Bush's $3.1 trillion spending plan for fiscal 2009 which was unveiled on Monday and predicted higher deficits for this year and next.

- Sen. Hillary Clinton

"The only real significance of the president's budget is to serve as a legacy of his disastrous fiscal management over the last seven years. Once again we've seen the president's failed priorities laid bare in a budget that preserves every cent of his tax cuts for the wealthiest while placing the burden of his failures on the backs of working families, senior citizens, our police, our firefighters, our teachers and others ...

"This budget's biggest contribution is a commitment to more deficits and even more debt financed by countries like China ... It has been seven years since this president squandered the opportunities of the surpluses created during the Clinton administration, and it is past time to restore responsible fiscal management and put the priorities of middle class Americans first."

- Sen. Barack Obama

"There is no better example of why we need change in Washington than an eighth Bush budget that once again contains neither compassion nor conservatism.

"At a time when we're spending billions of dollars a week in Iraq and working families are struggling like never before, the president actually wants to keep tax cuts we can't afford for wealthy Americans who don't need them while cutting half a trillion dollars from Medicare and Medicaid as well as education, low-income heating assistance, housing and anti-poverty programs.

"He continues to hide the full cost of a misguided war while mortgaging our children's future with a $407 billion budget deficit."

(Reporting by Deborah Charles and Jeff Mason, editing by Alan Elsner)