WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration pledged Thursday not to try to cut farm spending when Congress returns to work next year on an overhaul of agriculture and nutrition programs.

''The administration is certainly committed to those budget amounts that the Congress has agreed to, and the administration is ready and willing to support good policy,'' Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said.

This year's congressional budget agreement set aside $170 billion to spend on farm programs over the next decade, including $73.5 billion that was to come from a projected surplus.

The Senate was unable to agree before the Christmas recess on a Democratic plan to reauthorize farm programs through 2006. Democrats say that puts at risk money that was earmarked for farmers. Budget forecasts due to be released in late January are expected to predict the government will run several years of deficits.

''The psychology will be altered,'' said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. ''These needs that are a very important priority for big sections of the country will be pushed to the side. That is the risk.''

Existing farm programs don't expire until October, but lawmakers say the more important deadline is in April, when Congress is due to agree on a new long-range budget, which could alter the allocation of funding.

Senate leaders say they will take up the issue again soon after they return from their holiday recess late next month.

''We're going to do fine by the farmer,'' Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said during a telephone news conference with Veneman. ''We're going to get a new farm bill.''

Democrats gave up on their farm bill for the year after they were unable Wednesday for the third time in a week to muster the 60 votes necessary to bring the measure to a final vote.

Roberts cosponsored a Republican subsidy plan that was endorsed by the administration but soundly rejected in the Senate.

Most of the money in the Democratic bill would continue to go to grain, cotton and soybean farms, but the bill offers new subsidies for a variety of additional commodities, including milk, honey and lentils. It also would double spending on conservation.

The administration criticized both that bill and one passed by the GOP-controlled House in October and urged Congress to delay finishing work on them until 2002. Both bills risk exceeding levels set in an international trade agreement and provide too much money to big farms that least need the assistance, the administration said.

The Senate Democratic bill also would spend about $45 billion of the $73.5 billion in surplus funds before 2007.

Roberts' bill had lower subsidy rates for crops and would give farmers more money in fixed annual payments. It also would have set up subsidized savings accounts similar to a Canadian farm program.

Farmers are split over how Congress should change farm policy, said Otto Doering, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

Some ''worry about the size of subsidies. You have others who just want to take the money to the bank,'' he said.

The Senate deadlock pushes the issue into an election year in which control of the chamber is at stake.

Several farm-state senators could face close re-election races in 2002, including the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Arkansas Republican Tim Hutchinson; Democrat Tim Johnson of South Dakota; and Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone.

''It's a setback,'' Harkin said.