If there was any doubt this month’s debate over the annual budget resolution would be flavored with presidential politics, get ready for Senate Republicans’ critique of the “Obama-Spend-O-Rama.”

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said Tuesday that Senate GOP staff has been combing through proposals made by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., on the campaign trail. They’ve tallied up 158 new programs and claim they would cost more than $300 billion annually. Specifics were not immediately available.

The Senate Budget Committee will mark up the fiscal 2009 budget resolution Wednesday and Thursday. Gregg met with reporters to lay out Republican priorities.

The resolution will be on the floor next week. The annual budget plan is non-binding, but sets the parameters for debate on spending and tax bills considered during the year.

Republicans plan to make an issue of Democratic presidential candidates’ policy proposals during debate on the annual budget blueprint. Obama has not secured the Democratic nomination and is in tight race with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. There are major primaries Tuesday in Ohio and Texas.

Gregg said the decision to critique Obama’s policy proposals was “basically an effort by Republican leadership in the Senate,” with his staff and the staff of the Republican Policy Committee doing the work. Clinton’s proposals will likely be critiqued as well, but Gregg said they didn’t have a name for them at the moment.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is the presumptive Republican nominee and can expect his policies to be the subject of Democratic attacks. Democrats have blasted the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (PL 107-16, PL 108-27), which McCain voted against but now says he supports, as leading to increasing debt.

Tax issues will be a major focus of floor debate since most of those tax cuts expire in 2010, part of the five-year period covered by the resolution.

The House Budget Committee will mark up its resolution Wednesday as well, planning to send it to the floor next week. The mark-up will go all day. The office of House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, announced it will “live-blog” the event, in hopes that someone in cyberspace will be eager for GOP updates.

While budget resolution markups tend to be long, that might not be the case this year in the Senate. Gregg said he wasn’t sure Republicans would offer many amendments, since proposals adopted last year were dropped during conference negotiations.

“I’m not sure we’re going to play that game again,” he said.

Still, many amendments are likely to be offered on the floor.

Gregg said Republicans will offer an amendment on the floor to boost the amount of spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if, as expected, the Senate budget resolution does not contain more than the $70 billion in war funding requested by the White House for fiscal 2009.

Democrats have criticized that amount as too low, given the president’s Iraq policy, and administration officials have said more will be needed. An updated request, though, is not expected until April at the earliest.

Another issue is whether Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., will be able to attend the markup. The 90-year-old Byrd, also chairman of the chamber’s appropriations committee, is recovering from a urinary tract infection and may not be present Thursday when amendments would be considered. With most committee votes expected to fall along partisan lines the absence of one senator could prove decisive.

But Gregg said he has spoken with Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., about how to handle Byrd’s absence, adding that Republicans agreed they would not allow the resolution to fail in committee solely because of Byrd’s absence. He declined to give details.