Washington - This is what a smaller government will look like: There will be less money for local cops, but more money for FBI agents. Less to repair public-housing complexes. More to feed hungry children.

There will be less to fix polluted rivers. But more to fix crowded prisons.

On Thursday, the House and Senate passed a bill that provided a detailed vision of the federal government on a diet. Legislators approved a $130.4 billion measure that funded five Cabinet departments, the first big budget bill since this summer's promise of greater austerity.

It was a guide to what this Congress cares about, now that it can't care about everything.

The bill favors law enforcement agencies and programs that funnel money directly to voters. And it cuts programs that send cash to local government agencies, or other nonvoting recipients such as rivers and grasslands and woods.

"What it says to me is that the federal priorities . . . are wrong," said Doug Siglin, a lobbyist for the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation. His cause was one of the losers: The bill strips out millions of dollars to pay farmers for preventing pollution from running off their property into the watershed.

"The priority seems to be that the money we spend on agriculture goes to pollute the environment," by encouraging more farming without environmental safeguards, Siglin said. "And not to end the pollution."

Thursday's budget bill contains a provision that would fund the entire federal government until Dec. 16, averting a government shutdown.

But its broader impact comes from the budgets it sets for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Transportation, as well as science agencies such as NASA. These budgets are the first ones approved since the debt-ceiling fight ended with a pledge to create leaner government.

This budget is leaner. But not by much. The whole package was $700 million less (not counting "emergency" funding for disasters) than last year, which was a reduction of 0.5 percent.

"They're basically overturning the cushions on the mattress and basically trying to find the loose change," said Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst for the Cato Institute. "There's nothing here that fundamentally alters what the government does."

The bill passed 298 to 121 in the House and 70 to 30 in the Senate. President Obama's signature will make it law.

Harder work remains. Congress must pass budgets for the rest of the federal government, divvying up a total of $1.043 trillion.

On Thursday, lawmakers congratulated themselves for taking the first step.

"Your appropriations committee . . . is working," said Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., the committee's chairman, summing up years of dysfunction in a single dramatic pause.