Washington ? The House narrowly approved a health and education spending bill Friday for 2006 that cuts deeply into scores of programs and bars Medicare and Medicaid from covering impotence drugs.

The $602 billion bill, approved 250 to 151, is slightly more than President Bush proposed but less than many lawmakers had wanted. Republicans and Democrats took two days of floor time trying to win extra money for popular programs that fall under the $142.5 billion portion of the bill that Congress controls, the balance going to mandatory programs such as Medicaid.

Only a few of those efforts were successful, including a bid Thursday to restore $100 million to public broadcasting.

The spending bill funds federal education programs, including Pell Grants, special education grants, teacher training, Head Start, and basic skill assessments. It also pays for a vast array of medical research and health care programs, from Medicaid to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to the Ryan White AIDS program, to numerous public health initiatives, including bioterrorism preparation.

The bill provides funding to implement the new Medicare prescription drug program and for two big priorities of the conservative movement: faith-based community outreach and abstinence education.

But a tight budget squeeze forced the termination of 57 programs, and froze or reduced funding to many others.

Democrats sought to depict the bill as the outgrowth of misplaced Republican priorities. Citing the billions in tax cuts that Congress has enacted under the Bush presidency, many of them targeting the wealthy, Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said, “It is inexcusable, and I find it immoral, that the first thing that goes is our investment in our children’s future.”

Menendez singled out education cuts, a rich target given that one of Bush’s proudest achievements is No Child Left Behind Act, a package of education revisions passed in his first term. Menendez noted that the appropriations bill cuts funding for initiatives created under No Child Left Behind by more than $800 million from last year, to a level far less than Bush had requested for fiscal 2006.

The frustration was bipartisan. Many Republicans offered amendments or spoke out against certain cuts. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., complained that the only federal program for disadvantaged gifted students was slotted for elimination. He noted that the program reached 2 million children nationwide for about $11 million per year.