WASHINGTON – Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki praised President Bush yesterday for proposing $2 billion in an otherwise lean federal budget to pay for a rail link connecting Lower Manhattan to the Long Island Rail Road and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

If the money is approved by Congress, which has previously rejected funding the project, Mr. Pataki said the rail link will dramatically reinvigorate downtown and bring new jobs to the area.

New York’s congressional Democrats yesterday blasted the rest of the $2.57 trillion spending plan that Mr. Bush sent to Congress. It proposes cuts to 150 federal programs and grants, including dozens that flow to New York.

Senator Clinton accused Mr. Bush of “hiding” the costs of his proposals, including tax cuts and the creation of private retirement accounts, while “openly slashing” funding for “vital” social services.

Senator Schumer called the budget a “meat ax” that “cuts the core out of the Big Apple,” and “the worst budget for New York that I’ve seen in my 26 years in the Congress.”

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat of Queens who is mulling a mayoral run against Mr. Bloomberg, estimated that the budget cuts $1.2 billion in federal aid to the city.

“I don’t see any sign that the mayor’s lobbying has been successful up to now,” he said.

The president said the budget sets priorities by cutting programs that are redundant or have failed to achieve results.

“Our priorities are winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland, growing our economy,” Mr. Bush said, adding that “taxpayers in America don’t want us spending their money on something that’s not achieving results.”

The spending cuts are expected to save the federal government $20 billion in 2006 alone.

The budget also includes $1.3 trillion in tax breaks and tax cuts, and it assumes the president’s tax cuts will be made permanent.

Other items in the president’s proposed budget include:

* A 4.8% increase in the military budget, to $419.3 billion, for 2006.

* A 7% increase in the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, funded largely by fee increases, including a $3 increase in the security surcharge on airline tickets.

* $10 billion over 10 years in tax incentives to create economic “Opportunity Zones” in areas where entire industries have shut down.

* Cuts to agricultural subsidies, including a $587 million cut in direct payments to farmers.

Rep. Peter King, a Republican of Long Island, said the president should be given credit for making “tough choices” in a time of war. “We can negotiate it, increase where we have to, but it does not serve our purpose to take cheap shots,” he said. Mr. King said he would press for funding for New York’s teaching hospitals.

Mr. King also praised the president’s proposal to put $390 million toward a rail link that would take commuters directly from the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal, which he said would bring jobs to Manhattan and shorten commutes.

The budget’s spending cuts are aimed at reducing a federal deficit projected to reach $427 billion in 2005, or 4.3% of Gross Domestic Product. The White House expects the deficit to fall to 1.4% of GDP by 2009, if spending is restrained and the economy grows.

But Democrats said the budget excludes the costs of several key policies.

While deficit projections include $81 billion in supplemental spending that the president will ask for in the coming days, it does not reflect war-related funding after 2005.

The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, told reporters it would be “irresponsible” for the administration to predict “undetermined but anticipated” expenses.

The 2006 budget also does not reflect the costs of financing the president’s proposal to create personal retirement accounts, which the White House estimates will cost $664 billion in transition financing over the next 10 years, with an additional $90 billion in related debt service.

Even with the additional costs, the president would remain on track to meet his pledge of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, Mr. Bolten said yesterday.

Mrs. Clinton said the budget does not show the “true costs” of the president’s tax cuts, because they take effect after 2010, beyond the budget window.

And without laying out the costs of the president’s key domestic and foreign priorities, “the administration makes it impossible to take its budget seriously,” said Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat of Harlem.

He said the budget continues to “raid” the Social Security trust fund, while the president says he wants to save Social Security, because the existing surplus in the trust fund is being borrowed to pay for tax cuts and spending.

Mr. Rangel also criticized Mr. Bush for not extending his cut to the Alternative Minimum Tax, which he said hits middle-class people in expensive states like New York. Mr. Bolton said the president wants to eliminate the tax as part of a broader overhaul of the federal tax code.

Mr. Bolten conceded that he did not expect Congress to approve all of the proposals, but said he was very optimistic that Congress would cooperate with the White House.

Other than the rail proposal, Mr. Bloomberg did not comment on other aspects of the budget, saying he had not read them and had not been briefed on them.

Rep. Jose Serrano, a Democrat of the Bronx, said the budget “pays for aggressive tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of America’s working people.”

Mr. Bolten rejected such arguments yesterday, saying the president’s tax cut makes the tax code “more progressive” because income taxes were cut for all taxpayers, and the top 5% of income earners, who paid less than 52% of the total income tax revenue before the tax cuts, would now pay more than 54% of the total revenue.

The administration is “ensuring that the safety net remains” by increasing funding for community health programs, Mr. Bolten said.

Among the budget’s proposed reductions, Amtrak would see its federal subsidies cut, as the administration is proposing funding only the parts of the system that are commercially viable. “The market needs to apply in railroads as everywhere else,” Mr. Bolton said.

The budget also proposes reducing Medicare matching funds to cities in cases where coverage is not required by law. Currently, some 1.5 million people receive non-mandatory Medicaid benefits in New York City, according to Mr. Weiner, who predicted that many poor families would lose their benefits.

New York would also receive $2.4 million less in health services to the uninsured.

Under the budget, the city would receive $213 million in funding for homeland security and first responders, or 53% less than it requested. Mr. Bush has also proposed eliminating federal funding to help cities hire police officers.

Last year, the city received $6.25 million to hire 50 school resource officers. The program has placed more than 7,000 officers on the streets in New York.

The budget would increase funding for education grants to low-income school districts, increasing New York’s allocation by $41 million to $910 million. But Mr. Weiner said the amount falls short of the $1.552 billion promised under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The city stands to lose $178 million in funding to community development block grants, which are used to pay for day-care centers, housing, after-school programs, and literacy training for low-income people. The budget also proposes a $30 million cut to block grants for anti-poverty community services.

In addition, Mr. Bush proposes scrapping a program that reimburses cities for the cost of incarcerating criminals who are undocumented immigrants. The Bloomberg administration had requested $81 million for that purpose.