WASHINGTON — The White House will seek to shrink the Department of Housing and Urban Development's $8 billion community branch dramatically, purging dozens of economic-development projects, scrapping a rural-housing program and folding high-profile anti-poverty efforts into the Labor and Commerce departments, administration officials said yesterday.

The proposal in the upcoming 2006 budget would make good on President Bush's vow to eliminate or consolidate what he sees as duplicative or ineffective programs. Officials said yesterday that economic-development programs are scattered too widely in the government and have proved particularly ineffectual at HUD.

Advocates for the poor, however, contended the White House is trying to gut federal programs for the poorest Americans to make way for tax cuts, a mission to Mars and other Bush priorities. Administration officials would not say how much the consolidation would save, but it could lead to steep funding cuts. That is because the HUD programs would compete for resources in Commerce and Labor budgets.

"I'm always willing to look at consolidation, but clearly they're using consolidation as a shield for substantial budget reductions," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, which oversees housing and community-development programs.

The plan was detailed in a December memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget to HUD. The document provides one of the first concrete examples of the types of cuts in the works as the administration battles a soaring deficit.

"The purpose of the exercise has nothing to do with achieving or not achieving savings," said one administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid preempting the Feb. 7 release of the budget request.

Congressional housing aides say the $4.7 billion Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program — the majority of the community-planning budget — could be cut as much as 50 percent. Cities have become dependent on HUD's development programs, especially the CDBG, city officials said.

"If this is a backdoor way of eliminating a program like CDBG, it would have a profoundly negative impact on cities," said Jim Hunt, vice president of the National League of Cities and a Clarksburg, W.Va., councilman.

Under the plan, the CDBG program — which provides multipurpose development grants to state and local governments — would be sent to the Commerce Department. The Urban Empowerment Zones and Renewal Community programs — both of which offer tax favors for development in troubled areas — also would go to Commerce, as would the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative, designed to revitalize abandoned industrial sites.

Youthbuild USA, a $62 million program to teach teens home-construction skills, would be sent to Labor. The $24 million rural-housing and economic-development program likely would die.

HUD would maintain the Home Investment Partnerships to build or buy affordable housing, homeless-assistance programs, and housing assistance for AIDS sufferers. HUD ultimately could lose a quarter of its $31 billion budget.

The proposal could face an uphill fight in Congress, said Frank, who called the proposal "just appalling." With budgets tight, vested interests in Commerce and Labor would be expected to favor their programs over newcomers from HUD, he said. Moreover, HUD has evolved into the agency designed to support urban interests and low-income citizens, while Commerce and Labor are more receptive to business needs.

One White House official agreed that HUD programs have more of a community focus, while Commerce's Economic Development Administration is more interested in economic growth. But, he said, "they're funding a lot of the same things."