Administration Reprises Limit Charitable Deductions and Revise Cell Phone Rules

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The White House is reprising a plan to reduce the benefits wealthier people take on itemized deductions like charitable gifts and mortgage interest. The idea could soon raise more than $30 billion a year, but is sure to be dead on arrival on Capitol Hill.

The administration has already announced it will propose freezing, on average, the budgets of domestic agencies for three years, a difficult but largely symbolic step, saving just $10 billion to $15 billion in 2011.

Some Cabinet departments such as Homeland Security, Justice, Education and Transportation will enjoy budget increases, officials familiar with the budget say. But Commerce will face a big cut because of lower costs for the Census Bureau, while the Environmental Protection Agency would bear cuts in accounts funding local clean water efforts. The Interior Department would face a budget freeze.

The White House announced Saturday that Obama will propose to kill off or cut back 120 programs to save $20 billion. They include the Save America's Treasures program, originally designed to preserve "irreplaceable" U.S. cultural and heritage resources such as the bus in which Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. Lawmakers, however, often direct the money to refurbish projects such as old small-town movie houses and county courthouses.

The White House also reprised a plan cutting abondoned mine payments to Western coal states that have already cleaned up their mines, with Wyoming bearing the bulk of the cuts. It's again likely to try to kill a program that helps states with the cost of incarcerating criminal illegal immigrants.

Government documents projects a $708 billion budget for the Pentagon next year, which includes $159 billion for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's roughly equal to war estimates for the ongoing budget year that started in October.

The core Pentagon budget would receive about a 3 percent boost.

A Treasury official said Saturday Obama's proposal also calls for repealing a widely ignored tax on the personal use of company-issued cell phones and other mobile devices. A 1989 law — passed when cell phones were considered a luxury — says that personal use of a company cell phone should be taxed like other fringe benefits, such as a company car.