A proposal to eliminate all congressional earmarks to meet the White House’s steep demands on domestic spending ran into deeply skeptical senators from both parties Tuesday, signaling that many lawmakers will fight to keep their pet projects as Democrats struggle to finalize their year-end budget plans.

Cutting off earmarks could prove particularly problematic from some members of Congress who face tough reelection battles in 2008 and tout the earmarked funding to show constituents how effective they are on Capitol Hill.

Obey offered the proposal Monday in response to a White House veto threat and GOP attacks on an omnibus spending plan that would add about $11 billion to President Bush’s $933 billion request for domestic spending. Democrats are still finalizing the details of the plan, which would combine the 11 pending annual fiscal 2008 spending bills into one massive package.

House and Senate leadership in both parties were reluctant to rally around the proposal, while rank-and-file members, especially those in tight reelection races, pressed their leaders to fight back against any plan to kill the earmarked funding for their priorities back home.

“It’s not just earmarks, it’s new policies that are trying to be changed that are important to many, many members of this Congress, whether it has to do with any number of important issues,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who secured nearly $500 million in earmarks for the energy and water appropriations bill alone and is one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2008. “ ‘My way or the highway’ is not a good way to run a railroad, and it’s not a good way to run Congress.”

Sen. Gordon Smith, the Oregon Republican whom Democrats believe they can knock off in 2008, said he was “enormously frustrated” with how the spending fight and other legislative battles have played out.

“Earmarks are unpopular in a media sense, [but] it’s one of the ways Congress exercises its purse strings under the Constitution,” said Smith, who racked up over $68 million in earmarks in the fiscal 2008 energy and water bill this Congress. “The [president’s domestic spending] number is a good goal, but the president doesn’t run the legislative branch. We do. We’re an equal branch of government.”

 House Republican leaders, who say they will not support funding above Bush’s request, said Obey’s threat was “idle.” Senate Republican leaders, meanwhile, planned to push a proposal to shave spending across the board without eliminating earmarks.

House Democratic leaders insisted the plan was being discussed seriously, but their Senate counterparts signaled the Obey plan was just one option out of many under consideration.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he “is happy to listen” to Obey’s approach but “is not advocating anything.” Aides said Reid, who met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday afternoon, is open to the Obey plan as a last resort if Republicans don’t agree to a compromise on domestic funding.

Asked if the Obey plan was off the table, Pelosi said, “Not from my standpoint.”

Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he expected that a compromise would be reached to retain the earmarks. “We are going to work out something in the end eventually,” said Cochran, who has collected $774 million worth of earmarks in 12 spending bills — the most in Congress, according to the Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Some Republicans seemed open to the Obey idea.

“If they do that and it’s bipartisan, I don’t have any problem,” said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a legendary earmarker who has secured $502 million in earmarks in the dozen fiscal 2008 bills, the second most in Congress.

 “I’ve been chairman — if you have to do something, you have to do it,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is favored in his reelection race in 2008, said the plan “sounds good to me.”

 Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, another vulnerable Republican in 2008, dismissed the move as political posturing, predicting that he would not receive any political backlash if Democrats moved to strip his earmarks from the bill.

“I don’t think it’s a real deal,” said Coleman, who secured $60 million in the energy and water spending bill.

Still, it appeared that the plan was making little headway within the Republican Conference, which angered conservatives hoping the GOP would accept the plan and declare a victory on spending.

“It looks like the addicts in both parties still aren’t ready to go cold turkey and put the bottle down,” a GOP aide said. “Obey called our bluff and now we’re the ones left defending earmarks.”

Far from rallying around the Obey threat, Democrats insisted it was a last resort.

“It’s a threat we take very seriously, and I hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Like other senators, Reid defended the earmarking practice in Congress.    

“I think we have equal say as to what should be spent in our states. I think that I have as much right — in fact, far more, because I know more — than [White House Office of Management and Budget Director] Jim Nussle has to determine what money should be spent in the state of Nevada. This should not all come from the White House.”

Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), an appropriator who faces reelection next year, said if the omnibus spending bill that emerges from the House increases spending over the president’s level, he will offer an amendment to shave off domestic spending across the board without eliminating earmarks.

McConnell said if the House passes a bill without earmarks and it meets the president’s preferred level of domestic spending, his amendment would be targeted strictly at boosting Iraq and Afghanistan war funding to $70 billion.

Nathaniel Weixel contributed to this story.