President Obama’s proposed $3.5-trillion federal budget for 2010 asks Congress to eliminate or reduce spending on 121 current programs, which would save nearly $17-billion. The cuts could affect many nonprofit organizations.

“We have to admit that there is a lot of money that’s being spent inefficiently, ineffectively, and, in some cases, in ways that are actually pretty stunning,” Mr. Obama said as the budget was released.

“Some programs may have made sense in the past, but are no longer needed in the present,” the president said. “Other programs never made any sense: the end result of a special interest’s successful lobbying campaign. Still other programs perform functions that can be conducted more efficiently, or are already carried out more effectively, elsewhere in the government.”

Among the programs that would see elimination in the Obama budget:

• Student Mentoring Program ($47-million). The Obama budget says the program, run by the U.S. Department of Education for students in grades four through eight, was found to be ineffective in a recent study. The program provides money to schools, community organizations, and religious groups for mentor programs. The Obama administration said the program also is duplicative of many other federal programs.

• Public Broadcasting Grants ($5-million). The U. S. Department of Agriculture made these grants to help rural public broadcasting stations in their conversions to digital broadcasting and “that transition is almost complete,” said Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a blog posting this morning.

• Even Start ($66-million). The program, which provides early childhood education and adult literacy services, often through community organizations, is run by the U.S. Department of Education. “Obviously, the president and the administration feel very strongly that early childhood education, done in a high-quality way, is crucially important,” an administration official said in a briefing. “However, a variety of studies of Even Start have suggested that that program does not work well,” the official said. “So we are proposing that Even Start be eliminated even while we are investing in other programs that do work, including Early Head Start and Head Start.”

• Javits Gifted and Talented Education Program ($7-million). The program “supports research, demonstration, and other activities to help elementary and secondary schools meet the educational needs of gifted students,” according to the Obama budget proposal. “The administration supports gifted and talented education. However, there is no evidence showing that this small federal program, which has been in operation for more than a decade, is increasing the availability of gifted of talented programs, enhancing their quality, or advancing innovation in the field.”

• National Institute for Literacy ($6-million). The institute “has had minimal success in fulfilling its mission to coordinate literacy services across the federal government,” according to the budget proposal. “Efforts to provide national literacy leadership could be coordinated more efficiently by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education within the Department of Education,” the proposal said.

• The Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation ($1-million). The independent federal agency was established to “encourage and support research, study, and labor designed to produce new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind.” Donations to the agency are tax deductible. An Obama administration official said only 20 percent of the agency’s million-dollar annual appropriation is paid out in fellowships and awards. “That’s obviously inefficient and we are proposing that that appropriation be eliminated,” the official said.

Among programs that would see funding reduced in the Obama budget is the African Development Foundation, which would lose $2.5-million of its current $33-million budget. The African Development Foundation is a federal agency that operates as a nonprofit corporation.

The Obama budget proposal said the agency had received a significant increase in money in 2008 for a “Strategic Partnership Program to create incentives for co-funding and collaboration with African partner governments and private sector partners, and thus to leverage the foundation’s resources. The program failed to achieve its goals.”