Washington ? A Democratic-dominated Senate panel has approved an election-year budget plan that cuts just a few billion dollars from President Obama’s budget for next year and puts off hard decisions on rapidly growing benefit programs.

With Democrats facing potentially ruinous losses in the midterm elections, the nonbinding Senate Budget Committee measure punts politically dangerous decisions on federal retirement programs like Social Security and Medicare to a bipartisan deficit commission that’s holding its first meeting next week.

It would reduce the deficit from last year’s $1.4 trillion record to $545 billion in five years, in part by freezing spending for many domestic agency budgets.