WASHINGTON — President Obama will send Congress on Monday a $3 trillion-plus budget for 2012 that promises $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade by freezing many domestic programs for five years, trimming military spending and limiting tax deductions for the wealthy.

Jacob Lew, the president’s budget director, said Sunday that the new spending plan for the 2012 would disprove the notion that “we can do this painlessly ... we are going to make tough choices.”

Republicans rejected that appraisal, castigating Obama for proposals that will boost spending in such areas as education, public works and research, and charging that Obama’s cuts are not deep enough.

They vowed to push ahead with their own plans to trim $61 billion in spending from the seven months left in the current budget year and then squeeze Obama’s 2012 budget plan for billions of dollars in additional savings in response to voters alarmed at an unprecedented flood of red ink.

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That document also said that the budget would cut the Pentagon’s spending plans over the next decade by $78 billion with reductions in various weapons programs deemed unnecessary including the C-17 aircraft, the alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and the Marine expeditionary vehicle.

Health care coverage rates for working-age military retirees would increase about 13 percent under a controversial plan unveiled by Pentagon officials Monday.

The fee increases, which will require approval from Congress, are part of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ broader plan to cut $7 billion from the military health system’s budget during the next five years.

The proposal does not change health coverage fees for active-duty members and their families or for Medicare-eligible Tricare for Life beneficiaries.

The current Tricare Prime annual enrollment fees of $230 for an individual retiree and $460 for a family have not changed since Tricare was created in 1996. Gates’ proposal would increase next year’s fees to $260 per year for an individual and $520 a year for a family.

The health care fees were just one component of the Pentagon’s 2012 budget request released Monday, which includes a $553 billion base budget and $118 billion for overseas contingency operations that would go directly toward the ongoing missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, budget documents show.

The baseline defense budget request marks the largest ever but is an uptick of less than 1 percent from last year’s request for $548 billion. It also includes a modest 1.6 percent pay increase for troops.

Military spending has risen steadily since 2001 and now exceeds its peak during the Cold War-era spending boom in the 1980s, when adjusted for inflation. But the Pentagon is coming under political pressure to rein in costs. In a nod to concerns about the growing national debt, Gates also released a five-year plan to reduce budget growth and eliminate annual spending increases by 2015.

Gates said at a Pentagon briefing Monday that the budget is the latest step in his effort to curtail spending and preempt efforts by Congress to impose even more severe cuts.

“These budget decisions took place in the context of a nearly two-year effort by this department to reduce overhead, cull troubled programs and rein in personnel and contractor costs — all with the purpose of preserving the fighting strength of America’s military at a time of fiscal stress,” Gates said.

Nine months after President Obama authorized a broad expansion of benefits for those caring for service members severely wounded in the nation's two current wars, none of the assistance has materialized and it is caught up in a bureaucratic tangle that could shrink the number of families eligible for the help.

Obama made care for military veterans and their families a priority in his role as commander in chief, and in May he signed into law a measure that for the first time would give cash assistance, counseling and fill-in help known as "respite care" to people overseeing the convalescence of wounded troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

As veterans and their families looked on during a White House signing ceremony, Obama called the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act a "major step forward in America's commitment to families and caregivers who tend to our wounded warriors every day."

But the Department of Veterans Affairs has since missed the Jan. 31 deadline for fully implementing the program, leaving the families of wounded troops to wonder when the promised help will arrive.

"We were really excited that somebody was taking us seriously and finally understanding the sacrifices we are making," Christine Schei said. She left her job several years ago to care for her son, Erik, who was rendered helpless by a sniper's bullet in Iraq. "We were counting down to the end of January to begin receiving these benefits. Now it looks like they haven't even begun."

The delays appear to be, in part, the result of an overly optimistic assessment of how long it would take to get the complex program up and running.

Veterans Affairs officials say designing the law has involved months of consulting with veterans groups, congressional leaders, families and others, and that some progress has been made. But determining who qualifies for the new benefits - including whether veterans of pre-Sept. 11, 2001, wars should be eligible for all of them - has been a complicated, politically fraught process.

In a statement, the department's spokeswoman, Katie Roberts, said, "VA looks forward to continue to work with our stakeholders as we enter the implementation stage of this new legislation."