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It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population.

But one administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers’ earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said.

“By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget,” the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The administration officials did not identify which programs Mr. Obama would cut or eliminate, but said that information would be in the budget he submits next week. For the coming fiscal year, the reductions would be $10 billion to $15 billion, they said. Last year Mr. Obama proposed to cut a similar amount — $11.5 billion — and Congress approved about three-fifths of that, the officials said.

The federal government’s discretionary domestic spending has grown about 5 percent on average since 1993, according to the administration. It spiked to about 27 percent from 2008 to 2009, however, because of the recession. The sudden increase reflected both the first outlays from the $787 billion stimulus package as well as automatic spending for unemployment compensation and food stamps that is triggered during an economic downturn.

The freeze that Mr. Obama will propose for the fiscal years 2011 through 2013 actually means a cut in real terms, since the affected spending would not keep pace with inflation.

According to the administration, by 2015 that share of the federal budget will be at its lowest level in a half-century relative to the size of the economy.

“A lot of our caucus won’t like it but I don’t think we have any choice,” said an adviser to Congressional Democratic leaders, who would only speak on condition of anonymity about internal party deliberations. “After Massachusetts and all the polls about independents’ abandoning us for being fiscally irresponsible, we can’t afford to be spending more than Obama.”

While the Democrats’ unexpected loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election last week gave new impetus to administration efforts to tackle the deficit, those efforts actually have been under way since last fall, when officials began early work on the 2011 budget.

Mr. Obama’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, initially directed Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to propose alternative budgets — one with a freeze and another that cut spending by 5 percent. Months of internal arguments and appeals followed.

David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Washington.

More Articles in US » A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

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