Washington ? President Barack Obama’s allies rallied around his ambitious budget blueprint as he visited the Capitol on Wednesday, and only hours later a House panel endorsed it, pointing the way for major legislation this year on health care, energy and education.

Even so, both the House measure approved by the House Budget Committee on a party-line vote shortly before midnight and a companion Senate plan lack specifics for any of the administration’s signature proposals. And Democrats, particularly in the Senate, decided to cut spending and reduce exploding deficits below levels envisioned in the plan Obama presented less than a month ago.

The Senate Budget Committee was expected to approved its version of the measure today, preparing it for a vote by the full Senate next week.

Administration officials and congressional leaders said any differences were modest.

“This budget will protect President Obama’s priorities — education, energy, health care, middle class tax relief and cut the deficit in half,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after Obama met privately in the Capitol with rank-and-file Democrats.

Earlier, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters the congressional budgets “may not be identical twins to what the president submitted, but they are certainly brothers that look an awful lot alike.”

Neither house included the $250 billion that the administration seeks for any future financial industry bailout. Additionally, Both House and Senate Democrats assume in their version that Obama’s $400 tax credit for most workers will expire after 2010 and fail to permanently extend relief from the alternative minimum tax.

The House plan calls for spending $3.6 trillion in the budget year that begins Oct. 1, according to the Congressional Budget Office, compared with $3.7 trillion for Obama’s plan. The Senate would spend $3.5 trillion.

The House plan foresees a deficit of $1.2 trillion for 2010 but would cut that to $598 billion after five years. The comparable Senate estimates are $1.2 trillion in 2010 and $508 billion in 2014.

Obama’s budget would leave a deficit of $749 billion in five years’ time, according to congressional estimates — too high for his Democratic allies — and would grow to unsustainable levels exceeding 5 percent of the economy by the end of the next decade.

Given the strong Democratic congressional majorities in both houses, there is little or no doubt the spending blueprints can pass both houses next week. But Republicans greeted them with criticism nonetheless.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Democrats were advancing “the president’s high-cost, big-government agenda in camouflage. … Instead of simply righting the ship, this budget steers it in a radically different direction straight into the tidal wave of spending and debt that is already building.”

Ryan, who is the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, and GOP colleagues are expected to unveil an alternative day. No similar effort is expected in the Senate.

Meanwhile, House Budget Committee Democrats batted down on party-line votes a host of GOP amendments to curb spending, preserve tax cuts for wealthier taxpayers and small businesses, and oppose Obama’s plans to curb greenhouse gases during an all-day debate.

The budget is largely a nonbinding statement of targets for lawmakers to meet as they look ahead to the next fiscal year.