President George W. Bush challenged Democrats to make greater means-testing of benefits a central part of the solution to soaring entitlement spending yesterday, as he presented a $2,900bn budget to Congress.

The budget represents a challenge to the system of universal entitlements enacted as part of the Great Society agenda of the 1960s, with plans to slow the growth in spending on Medicare, the publicly funded health insurance programme for the over-65s, by raising premiums for wealthier recipients.