By Meghan Schiller, Contributing Writer

Senator Pat Toomey unveiled his much anticipated budget on Tuesday, offering to balance the budget in nine years, but leaving entitlement programs alone. Since then, Toomey has spent his time battling back against conservative, rather than liberal, criticism.

“Let it be known that this is the day America’s financial future died,” said Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, opening a segment on Toomey’s budget. “Today Tea Partiers elected to the United State Senate not only caved, they quit. They folded their spending tent and left. And all because some Medicare recipients stomped their feet and roared.”

“Senator, before getting into the details of your plan, the thing that sticks out is, you leave Medicare alone, which methinks indicates you lost your nerve,” Cavuto said to begin his interview with Toomey.

The general theme of that interview continued during Toomey’s appearance on WPHT-AM with Chris Stigall yesterday.

“It basically cuts the legs out from a guy like Ryan, who frankly needs everybody’s hands on deck right now,” said Stigall, who warned that President Obama could use Toomey’s budget to “bludgeon” the Republican Congressman.

AllahPundit, a lead blogger for the well known conservative blog Hot Air argued, “Toomey’s just trying to get us back to zero in 10 years and leaving the conversation on entitlements to a later date. But when is that later date? If not now, after a tea-party landslide in November, then when? I’m exasperated by the uncertainty.”

One commenter on that story said Toomey was “kicking the can down the road” due to politics, tied up by having a Democratic president as well as Senate majority. The budget’s failure to address entitlement reforms the crux of this criticism.

The conservative reaction isn’t entirely negative. Robert Costa at the National Review says Toomey’s budget is an important step forward. It’s, “a fiscally-conservative option; different from the Ryan plan, but worth examining.”

But Toomey has been a long time supporter of entitlement reforms, noting that he wrote an entire chapter on the subject in his book, Road to Prosperity.

Toomey has also accused Obama of failing to tackle the issue saying, “The president’s budget increases taxes and completely ignores the drivers of the country’s deficit problem- the entitlement programs.”

Toomey and his supporters believe that this budget is the necessary first step for a more permanent solution and that the fiscal issues under discussion require broader reforms.  Toomey’s proposal hopes to balance the budget in the shortest period of time, while providing the confidence needed for people to start investing in our economy.

Toomey defended his decision to leave those issues off the table for now, saying to Neil Cavuto, “I’m the guy that has written at great length about exactly how we should profoundly reform Social Security. If I were afraid of going after entitlements, I wouldn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have put Medicaid reform in this budget, I wouldn’t have called for the reductions in spending, which people will scream about, but I think are necessary.”

Toomey flatly rejected the idea that he was running away from the Ryan budget.

“I am on record repeatedly, publicly saying, ‘I support Paul Ryan’s approach and I’m gonna vote for it,’” Toomey told Stigell.

Indeed, the discussion may be academic. The likelihood of any Senate GOP budget passing are slim, given the Democratic hold on the chamber.

Keegan Gibson contributed to this report.