President Barack Obama’s new $3.83 trillion budget is a chickens-come-home-to-roost moment for Democrats who skipped past the deficit to tackle health care last year and now risk paying a heavy price in November.

The great White House political gamble was to act quickly — before the deficits hit home — and institute major changes which proponents say will serve the long-term fiscal health of the country. Instead, a year of wrangling and refusal to consider more incremental steps have brought Obama and Congress to this juncture, where waves of red ink threaten to swamp their boat and drown reform altogether.

“It’s very important to understand, we won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight given that the recovery is still taking hold and families across the country still need help,” Obama told reporters Monday. But with $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next five years, his spending plan seems also a cry for help in the face of what he sees as intransigent Republican opposition.

Not until 2014 to 2015 — midway through what Obama hopes will be his second term — is there any chance of approaching a sustainable budget. Even then, the president admits he will need the help of a bipartisan fiscal commission willing to tackle long-range issues like Social Security reform. (Emphasis added)

New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, called Monday for a bolder “game-changing budget that will turn things around.”

“I’m available if they need me, but I don’t think they’re thinking big,” Gregg told POLITICO, checking off his list of ideas, including a freeze on spending — ramped up by taking out all money now earmarked for lawmakers’ home-state projects.

More often, his colleagues competed to offer clever phrases: “They are sending a toy firetruck to combat a five-alarm fire,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

The timing could not be harder for Democrats, who must complete passage of the $1.9 trillion debt ceiling increase this week.

Old party fissures are reopening. In the Senate last week, fiscal moderates, many of them junior senators, joined Republicans in backing what would be tougher spending limits than the president’s budget proposes. At the same time, the president’s increased war funding for Afghanistan has reopened the “guns vs. butter” divisions in his party.

To show discipline, the White House is betting heavily on the symbolism of a three-year freeze on domestic discretionary spending accounts totaling about $447 billion annually.