Gates Reaches Out to GOP Freshmen to Shut Down Fighter Engine

A new fight is brewing on Capitol Hill over plans to build an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. And this time, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is appealing to new, fiscally minded conservatives in Congress to help him kill the project.

At issue is the second engine for the fighter, which General Electric Co. is developing with Rolls Royce PLC at an Ohio facility. Mr. Gates has tried – repeatedly, and unsuccessfully – to stop Congress from funding the engine, which he has described as emblematic of wasteful government spending.

The House is expected this week to take up debate on a new budget resolution for fiscal 2011. In a briefing today, Mr. Gates said he would “look at all available legal options to close down this program” if Congress includes funding for it in the spending bill.

“My hope is that, particularly the new members who are interested in fiscal responsibility, will see this as an opportunity to save $3 billion for the taxpayers that can be put to better use,” he said.

GE responded swiftly. In an emailed statement, company spokesman Rick Kennedy said, “Secretary Gates said he welcomed a debate on the House floor regarding the F136 competitive engine. We couldn’t agree more - there needs to be a debate on whether to hand a $100 billion monopoly of a single engine supplier.” …

House Tries New Rules for Spending Bill Debate

The House debate beginning Tuesday over a 2011 GOP spending measure could take on a bit of a Wild West atmosphere.

The bill will be read, paragraph by paragraph, on the House floor. When a member of either party wants to offer an amendment, he or she can rise and do so—as long as it’s relevant to the paragraph being read. At that point, any lawmaker can speak for five minutes — for or against the amendment.

Republican leaders boast that it’s a highly inclusive approach.

“This is an open process,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.). “Every member will have an opportunity to submit his or her vision of how we can reduce the deficit.”

Still, it’s somewhat untested—bills are often brought to the floor with tighter rules—and with 96 new House members, GOP leaders clearly feel lawmakers need some guidance. The House Rules Committee has produced a “basic guide” to amending the spending measure.

“When reading the bill for amendment it is only in order to offer the amendment at the appropriate point in the reading,” the document says. “Once the Clerk has read past the point at which the amendment first amends the bill, the amendment is no longer in order.”

In the current environment of heated debate over spending and deficits, the amendments will likely be numerous, and GOP leaders acknowledge they don’t know exactly what will happen…

Hillary Clinton: Tweet This?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Internet crusade continues.

On Tuesday, the former first lady is giving her second major address on the Internet and the importance of the free flow of information.

Last year, she laid out what has proven to be among her State Department’s signature policies, calling on countries like China, Iran and Syria to insure their citizens’ unfettered access to the Internet and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. These sites have in recent weeks played major roles in allowing political activists to organize the surge of protests that have engulfed the Arab world.

The message Mrs. Clinton will deliver Tuesday at George Washington University, though, will be slightly tweaked, according to people briefed on its contents.

More than just focusing on access to the Internet, the address will call on stronger guidelines for how information is shared and accessed on the Web. The speech is expected to allude to the recent posting by the Internet site WikiLeaks of thousands of classified State Department cables.

Mrs. Clinton will argue that such actions are abuses of the Internet that need to better regulated. “She’ll argue that there needs to be clearer guidelines on these types of issue going forward,” said one person familiar with the speech.

The speech will be webcast, of course, at the State Department’s website.

Ag Employee Finds Way to Save $350,000 a Year. Sorry FedEx

Buried deep in President Barack Obama’s budget, back where he lists programs he wants to cut, is the story of a money-saving suggestion made by an unidentified employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

The employee, the budget says, noted that the government daily sends many lab samples through FedEx for express next day service – about 125,000 samples a year. “While it is important to get our samples to the lab as quickly as possible, it is not as important to get the container back. The laboratory sends the sample box back to the originator by the same express method.” The annual shipping tab: $1,875,000 a year.

The employee suggested that the empties should be shipped back through regular ground service.

The USDA agreed, and the change is being made. Overnight express costs about $6.14 a package, the government estimated. If shipped by ground, the cost falls to $3.48.

Bottom line: The employee suggestion will save $150,000 in the remaining months of this fiscal year, and $350,000 in fiscal 2012.

EPA Official Cries Foul Over Obama’s Budget

The Environmental Protection Agency’s in-house watchdog apparently thinks President Barack Obama’s spending blueprint for fiscal 2012 doesn’t give him enough money to do his job.

A note accompanying Mr. Obama’s budget proposal, released Monday, says that EPA Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. “has submitted comments setting forth [his] conclusion that this Budget’s request … would substantially inhibit the Inspector General from performing the duties of the office.”

Why Mr. Elkins thinks this way wasn’t immediately clear Monday afternoon. Mr. Obama’s proposal doesn’t elaborate on Mr. Elkins’s objections. A spokeswoman for Mr. Elkins said her boss’ comments wouldn’t be made public until Thursday.

The president’s proposal calls for giving Mr. Elkins $46 million next year – compared with $45 million that was enacted in 2010. Overall, Mr. Obama proposes to cut the EPA’s budget by 12%, to about $9 billion.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Elkins’s office has complained about its funding. In December 2009, Bill A. Roderick, the EPA’s acting inspector general at the time, warned in a letter to the White House budget office that President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget would leave the EPA “vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse,” because it called big increases in spending for various forms of clean water grants that have “long been identified as areas of high risk,” but didn’t provide a corresponding increase in funding for his office’s audits and investigations…

Port of Savannah Gets Little Money in Obama Budget

By Cameron McWhirter

The Obama budget landed with a thud for executives at the Georgia Ports Authority, which had sought $105 million for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin deepening the commercial port in Savannah. The president’s budget contained only $600,000 for project approvals from various agencies – no actual dredging.

“We weren’t shocked, but obviously disappointed,” said Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. The authority had made the argument that a deeper port in Savannah, the second-busiest port on the East Coast after the Port of New York/New Jersey, was necessary to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of expanded exports.

Mr. Foltz said Georgia senators and congressmen have begun to work in Congress to get money for the port project. The delegation, he said, was “hopeful, but well aware of the realities of this budgetary climate.”

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat who lobbied for the dredging money at the White House, said he expected funding to be restored at the end of the budget process. “You can’t judge this by the first two minutes,” he said.

Savannah has been pressing an application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 1999 to dredge the Savannah River from its current 42-feet depth at low tide to 48 feet. The cost has been estimated at about $600 million, with $400 million of that coming from federal coffers.

To the north, South Carolina’s Port of Charleston, a big Savannah rival, had asked for a lot less for improvements – and got nothing.

Budget Calls for More Airport Scanners

Deficit hawks haven’t clipped the wings of the Department of Homeland Security. Its discretionary budget would increase 0.7% to $43.2 billion under the spending blueprint issued today by the Obama administration.

One area the administration is eager to expand: Airport security, including more of the full-body scanners that have proven a ligthning rod with certain sections of the traveling public. Partly in response to the uproar over the new scanners, the Transportation Security Administration has started testing new software for the machines that creates a generic, rather than graphic, image.

The budget request includes $77 million for an additional 275 full-body scanners (that’s $280,000 a pop), bringing the total number of scanners to be installed in U.S. airports at the end of the year to 1,275.

The administration’s budget will also up the ante on a different kind of airport security: Behavioral Detection Officers, or agents who are trained to spot abnormal behavior even before passengers get to the checkpoint.

The budget request includes $237 million to expand the program inside of big airports and broaden it out to some smaller airports. The whole program came under fire last year after a report from the Government Accountability Office found flaws in the way the program was conceived and put into practice, concluding “A scientific consensus does not exist on whether behavior detection principles can be reliably used for counterterrorism purposes.”

Democrats, Republicans Spar Over Budget

The early reviews are in on President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, and the results are predictably partisan.

Republicans complain his budget blueprint would result in too much spending and needless tax increases, while failing to pare the deficit. Democrats commend the president for attempting to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, while investing in crucial programs, from education to infrastructure, with the goal of keeping the country competitive in the global economy.

“We believe it strikes the right balance for the country going forward,” said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, calling it a “tough love” budget because it cuts money for popular programs, such as energy assistance to low-income families.

In contrast, Republicans are threatening “violent reductions” to crucial federal programs in their version of a stopgap spending bill on the floor this week, Mr. Van Hollen said Monday. “It stands in stark contrast to the blind budget slashing we’re seeing from our Republican colleagues in the House,” he said…

Public Broadcasting Could Take a Hit Under Obama Budget

Public broadcasters could see less government support under President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget, which cuts a $20 million Commerce Department program that funds public broadcasting facilities.

The fund helps pay for new antennas and broadcasting equipment for public radio and TV stations, but it could soon be a goner.

Last week, House Republicans also proposed cutting that $20 million program.

Although the White House proposed cutting that fund, it did offer a broader endorsement of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding for PBS and NPR stations across the country. The White House proposed $451 million in funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in fiscal year 2014, which would be a $6 million increase over its 2012 appropriations.

(Unlike many federal agencies, CPB receives advance appropriations. Congress hasn’t yet determined how much CPB will receive for fiscal year 2013.)

House Republicans proposed eliminating public broadcasting funding entirely on Friday as part of a broader effort to cut $100 billion in federal spending from the president’s 2011 fiscal year budget request through a continuing resolution. Congressional Democrats are vowing to fight the public broadcasting cuts in what’s likely to be re-run of previous budget battles…

Obama Budget Would Boost Education Spending

While President Barack Obama’s budget emphasizes spending cuts, the blueprint would pump billions more into U.S. education.

The plan calls for adjustments to the Pell Grant program for low-income college students and renews Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s push to link school dollars to national competitions like Race to the Top.

The budget, released Monday morning, would raise discretionary Education Department funding to $77.4 billion, a nearly 21% increase from $64.1 billion in 2010. It sets up an immediate battle with congressional Republicans, who sought to cut spending by nearly $5 billion from the 2010 levels.

At an appearance in a Baltimore County, Md., school this morning, Mr. Obama said the money is critical for a sustained economic recovery.

There is no comparison for the current fiscal year, 2011, because Congress did not pass an official budget, only a series of stop-gap spending bills. Education funding has increased this year, and is current running at an annual rate of $72.9 billion…