WASHINGTON – The $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 that President Obama proposed Monday would be the largest federal budget ever. But members of Washington’s congressional delegation disagree on whether Obama is rebuilding the economy or guilty of “generational theft.”

Obama proposes to spend hundreds of billions of more dollars to juice the economy while making small, surgical cuts in spending in other areas, including ending Boeing’s C-17 military transport aircraft program. He would let expire a Bush-era tax cut for families earning more than $250,000 while letting it stand for lower-income families. The budget also calls for new tax credits for small businesses that hire or raise wages, more Pell grant money for college students and the largest funding increase for K through 12 education.

Obama’s budget elicited distinctively partisan reactions from the state’s congressional delegation.

Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens, who sits on the House Budget Committee, lauded Obama for submitting a budget “that tackles our nation’s two biggest needs: creating jobs now and driving down the deficit in the future.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell’s staff methodically sifted through the president’s budget for impact on Washington. Cantwell generally praised Obama for making “critical investments to spur job creation.” They include money to hire more cops and to recruit and train doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals to work in underserved areas.

But Cantwell chided Obama for some of his budget cuts, including reducing federal lending to farmers to supplement commercial loans.

Obama’s budget allocates $2.13 billion for Hanford nuclear reservation, on top of nearly $2 billion Hanford received under the federal stimulus plan. Sen. Patty Murray’s press secretary said it was a big relief to the state, given previous threatened reductions to the nation’s overall environmental cleanup budget.

All that spending, however, was too much for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. The Spokane Republican decried Obama’s “reckless budget plan” that would saddle future generations with insurmountable federal debt. The federal government is on track to fall a record $1.6 trillion in the red this year, before the deficit drops to an expected $1.3 trillion in 2011.

“We owe it to our children and grandchildren to stop these ‘spend-and-borrow’ policies that weaken our economy at the expense of China and other powers,” said McMorris Rodgers, vice chair of the House Republican Conference.

The White House and Democrats have repeatedly pointed out that Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit and an economy on the verge of collapse from President Bush, who directed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without paying for it out of the federal budget while also cutting taxes.

Doc Hastings, McMorris Rodgers’s fellow Republican from Eastern Washington, called Obama’s call for more clean-up money for Hanford “a marked improvement” from last year. Nonetheless, Hastings slammed Obama’s overall spend-and-stimulate plan as “exactly the wrong approach.”

“This record $3.8 trillion budget proposal is about bigger government and more spending – not more jobs,” Hastings said.

UPDATE: Watch Sen. Murray question Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, at a Senate Budget Committee hearing Tuesday morning here (cue to 57:43 mark).