WASHINGTON – The Republican-controlled House proposed deep cuts to the Internal Revenue Service budget Tuesday, seeking to punish the beleaguered agency after it targeted tea party groups and other nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status.

The agency’s 2014 budget would be cut by $3 billion, or 24 percent below levels approved in March. Also, 10 percent of its budget for tax enforcement would be fenced off until the IRS implements recommendations by an agency watchdog designed to prevent further abuses.

The proposed cuts come after a wave of bad publicity for the IRS, including questionable spending on conferences such as a lavish $4.1 million event in 2010 that included a “Star Trek” video parody and a $17,000 payment to a motivational speaker who was a painter.

President Obama had requested a $1 billion increase in the IRS budget.

“Right now I can’t think of a federal agency in a worse position to ask for more money,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.

The Appropriations Committee also proposed to cut NASA, White House salaries and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The full House took up a $30.4 billion measure funding the Energy Department and water projects that is about $3 billion below levels enacted earlier this year. Democrats protested the proposed cuts to clean- and renewable-energy programs.

Democrats controlling a Senate panel, meanwhile, went in a wholly opposite direction, proposing a $1.3 billion increase for a Health and Human Services Department account responsible for implementing Obama’s signature health care law.

At issue are the annual spending bills funding the day-to-day operations of federal agencies. The Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate are acting as if on different planets, with the Senate ignoring deep automatic spending cuts and the House promising even more punishing cuts to domestic programs while restoring money to the Pentagon.

The House is drafting spending bills in line with a $967 billion “cap” required by automatic cuts that took effect in March after Washington failed to agree on an alternative mix of tax increases and cuts elsewhere in the $3.5 trillion federal budget. The Senate is writing bills to a $1.058 trillion cap, almost a full 10 percent higher. And the House cuts to domestic programs are greatly magnified by a $41 billion shift from nondefense programs like NASA, education and research on renewable energy to the Pentagon.

The result are night-and-day differences between the House and Senate spending bills illustrated most dramatically by a $164 billion Senate measure unveiled Tuesday by liberal Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa. The measure, which funds education, health and labor programs, is a full 26 percent more generous to such programs than an as-yet-unreleased House version and provides an almost 5 percent increase over levels enacted in March.

So even as advocates for the poor worry about budget cuts forcing poor preschoolers from Head Start, the Senate measure promises to increase the program by $1.6 billion, or about 20 percent. Health research would win a small increase, as would Title I grants to help educate disadvantaged school children.

Republicans say the Senate bills are filled with empty promises. Even if they were enacted over Republican opposition, they would be subject to across-the-board cuts known as sequestration that would bring them down to the $967 billion level embraced by Republicans. Sequestration is required because Congress and Obama have failed to follow up a 2011 budget pact with deficit cuts, other than a bitterly fought tax increase on upper-bracket earners.

Democrats counter that Republicans are offering empty promises as well — to defense hawks upset by sequestration. The House Republican increases to the Pentagon would be automatically rolled back through sequestration, as would Senate Democrats’ efforts to increase domestic programs.Absent a broader agreement on the budget, the rival chambers of Congress are on a collision course, facing a potential government shutdown when current-year funding runs out Sept. 30. A shutdown is unlikely, but avoiding one would require a stopgap funding measure to keep the government running after that date.