Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has urged George Osborne to make a swift economic "U-turn", after growth forecasts for 2013 were halved to 0.6% in the Budget.
Mr Balls said government policies had "sucked confidence" out of the economy and the plan was not working.
During the two men's tour of media outlets after the Budget, Mr Osborne defended his economic package.
He insisted his strategy was working, saying "we have to go on confronting these problems" and cutting debt.
Those measures included freezing petrol duty rises and a cut in corporation tax to 20% in 2015.
'Borrowing for failure'He also cancelled future automatic beer duty rises, cut current duty on a pint by 1p and unveiled measures to boost the housing market.
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End QuoteCity experts were predicting borrowing would rise a lot more than this. How did the chancellor avoid this fate?"
But he cut his growth forecasts for this year to 0.6% - having predicted 1.2% growth four months ago in his autumn statement.
And figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest the government's efforts to cut the deficit - the difference between money spent and earned in a year - have stalled and it will remain stuck at about £120bn for three years.
Ahead of a Budget debate in the Commons later, Mr Balls told the BBC that while there were some "good things" in the Budget, it had shown "in even more vivid detail than before... that the plan's not working. The economy is not growing".
He added: "If you're a chancellor, if you made a mistake, do your U-turn quickly.
"The longer you wait, the worse it gets, and the harder it becomes politically, even if economically it's the right thing."
He accused the chancellor of having a "self-denying ordinance" which restricted him from do anything other than "tinkering at the edges".
"They are borrowing for failure when they could have borrowed to get the economy moving and actually get the deficit down," he added.
But Mr Osborne told BBC Breakfast: "I'm not going to pretend there's an easy answer to our problems. We've just got to go on confronting them, dealing with those debts."
That echoed the message he gave in his Budget statement, that it was taking longer than expected but "we are, slowly but surely, fixing our country's economic problems".
He told MPs: "This is a Budget that doesn't duck our nation's problems. It confronts them head on. It is a Budget for an aspiration nation."
In other Budget news:
- The UK's national debt will rise to 85% of GDP and not start coming down until 2017/18 - two years later than predicted when the coalition came to power
- A new scheme starting next year aims to help about 75,000 people buy their own homes through shared equity, mortgage guarantees and interest-free loans
- Corporation tax will be cut from 21% to 20%, with the small company and main rate merged
- A 1% public sector pay cap will be extended by an extra year to 2015/16
- A petrol tax rise planned for the autumn has been scrapped
- The beer duty escalator, which saw tax go up 2% a year above inflation, is axed and 1p is cut from the price of a pint
Business Secretary Vince Cable admitted the economy was "flat lining" and refused to predict when the "age of austerity" might end - although he thought it "unlikely" to last until 2020.
It all meant Mr Osborne had little room for manoeuvre when it came to tax giveaways, but he found some extra cash by squeezing public spending further and other measures.
This allowed him to bring forward the introduction of a £10,000 income tax threshold by a year, to 2014, in a move that pleased the Lib Dems, who had campaigned on the issue at the last election.
'Miserable Budget'The chancellor ignored pre-Budget calls by Mr Cable and others to borrow more to boost growth with a big building programme.
But he did announce £2.5bn of spending on infrastructure paid for by a fresh public spending squeeze. Details of where the axe will fall will be announced in June when the government unveils its spending review.
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Mr Osborne also announced that the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee had been given an updated broader remit, but keeps its 2% inflation target.
Meanwhile, after the Evening Standard tweeted details of the Budget before Mr Osborne had delivered it, the chancellor has asked his top official to conduct a review of the practice of releasing Budget information in advance of the speech.
The Scottish National Party described Mr Osborne's statement as a "miserable Budget" which "just continues along the austerity path that is clearly failing".
Plaid Cymru said the £2.5bn in infrastructure spending was just a "fraction" of what was actually needed.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said it was "yet another Budget that treats the public with contempt, continuing to peddle the myth that our national debt and deficit increased due to excessive public spending rather than bank bailouts".
UKIP leader Nigel Farage dismissed Mr Osborne's statement as a "Budget for headline writers" that failed to tackle "the serious problems in our economy".
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