Will Iggy pull the plug on Steve?

The NDP and Bloc are thoroughly dissatisfied with the budget, as we know. Not without good reason I think; here are some of the NDP's reasons. The folks at the Progressive Economics Forum have some more points. Here's something that's worth noting:

The infrastructure investment overall is very modest in size and falls well short of what the cities and environmental organizations were looking for. At about $5 billion per year the total package, if spent, might create only 50,000 jobs.

The Budget does not remove or limit the current costly and time-wasting mandatory requirement to actively consider P3s to access the Building Canada Fund, and the launch of the P3 Fund combined with required city support for new projects will likely give yet another boost to P3s moving forward.

The second point is critical. If a municipality wants to access the infrastructure money, they have to accede to the Tories' ideologically driven demand that they look at the highly questionable "public private partnership" model, presumably so that Harpo's buddies get their share of the cash.

So will the Liberals vote for it? Probably. Ignatieff is likely nervous about whether the Governor-General would allow the coalition to take power, and also is probably reluctant to become prime minister at a time when the economy is just starting to tank. Expect the Liberals to pass the budget "with reservations".