Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee Judd Gregg (R-NH) criticized the President's budget plan yesterday, calling the White House budget practices "irresponsible" and "unrealistic." In an interview with CongressDaily Gregg said Bush has supported massive increases for defense, and has augmented those increases with emergency funding that does not fit within budget caps. He said to expect "a reasonably vanilla year in the area of budgeting," but noted that one of his goals will be to rein in "this new shadow budget called emergency spending." Gregg, who is also Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said: "It's a very strange approach to budgeting that they've taken. Because essentially what they're saying is, 'Everything else in the government is going to be subject to severe limitations in spending, but the area that we're interested in is going to have no budget process at all, it's simply going to be done outside the budget process through emergencies.' And I don't think they have any credibility on budgets. I've made my points very clear to the White House." Bush's FY07 budget request has the Defense Department seeing a $24 billion increase over this year's budget; this increase does not include emergency funding. Bush has requested $115 billion in emergency funds for this year and next to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gregg also cited grievances regarding Bush's proposed cuts in Medicare and other entitlements through the budget reconciliation process, noting that this year there are added election-year pressures in voting. He said, "Last year was an extremely aggressive budgeting year, though there were a lot of people who pooh-poohed it. This year being an election year, I'd be happy to do another aggressive budget, but I've got to have 51 votes and I don't think I have them."