WASHINGTON — President Obama sent Congress a budget yesterday that proposes to eliminate or trim 121 programs and save $17 billion next year — about half of one percent of the $3.4 trillion in federal spending for the fiscal year beginning in October.

"It is important ... for all of you, as you're writing up these stories, to recognize that $17 billion taken out of our discretionary, nondefense budget, as well as portions of our defense budget, are significant," Obama told reporters. "They mean something."

Obama's hit list was smaller than the one President George W. Bush included in his budget last year targeting 151 programs for $34 billion in savings.

Bush didn't have much luck in getting those cuts through the Democratic-controlled Congress. Obama may run into some of the same difficulties.

In fact, he brought back some of the same Bush-proposed cuts — including a $400 million-a-year program that reimburses states and localities for holding suspected criminals who are in the county illegally.

That program has been popular with border-state governors and lawmakers. Obama's own secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, was among officials who petitioned Bush for more money for the program when she was governor of Arizona.

Even with the cuts, the White House estimates the government's red ink will still be about $1.2 trillion, down only slightly from this year's all-time record.

Republicans said that Obama's cuts were not nearly enough.

"They appear to be a diversionary tactic — an effort to change the subject away from the unprecedented debt this budget heaps on future generations," said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

AMONG THE BUDGET CUTS