GOP proposes temporary funding bill with spending cuts

The Ohio Republican is insisting on about $4 billion in spending cuts, the latest salvo in a continuing battle with Democrats running the Senate. Those are still being put together. The $4 billion figure is roughly equal to the pace of cuts in a bigger bill passed by Republicans last week that slashes $61 billion from the budget over the remaining seven months of the fiscal year.

Boehner’s idea was immediately rejected by Senate Democrats as a nonstarter.

The exchange comes a day after Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said Senate Democrats will try to pass a 30-day measure to keep the government frozen at last year’s budget levels. Boehner flatly rejected the idea.

“Americans understand we need to stop the spending binge in Washington to create a better environment for job creation,’’ Boehner said. “So I ask Senator Reid, with all due respect: What are you willing to cut?’’

“This bill would simply be a two-week version of the reckless measure the House passed last weekend,’’ said Reid spokesman Jon Summers. “It would impose the same spending levels in the short term as their initial proposal does in the long term, and it isn’t going to fool anyone.’’

The hardening political positions come as a March 4 deadline looms. That’s when a current stopgap measure expires, and unless another one is passed, nonessential government programs will temporarily close down. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

Having a competitor to the primary engine made by United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney unit would save $20 billion over time, chief executive Jeffrey Immelt said yesterday in a memo to employees, repeating an estimate from the Government Accountability Office.

The vote to eliminate $450 million in engine funds for the fiscal year through Sept. 30 occurred in “the midst of an important fiscal debate,’’ Immelt wrote. “The JSF funding decision received significant scrutiny and was miscast as an ‘earmark’ on wasteful spending.’’

President Obama and the Pentagon have sought to cancel the engine for the F-35, the stealth fighter made by Lockheed Martin Corp. Last week’s vote was the first by the House in more than four years against the engine, which is being developed by GE and Rolls-Royce Group Plc. and which would be built in several GE sites, including in Lynn, Mass.

The F-35 is the Defense Department’s most-expensive program, with a cost surging to about $382 billion from an estimated $250 billion for development and other expenses a decade ago.

Immelt said that while he is “completely respectful’’ of the budget debate and deficit-reduction efforts, the Pentagon’s acquisition process has not received the scrutiny it deserves in the current round of spending cuts.

“The budget debate has completely skipped a critical policy element — Pentagon acquisition reform,’’ said Immelt, who was named by Obama as the head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The fighter program “is the largest procurement in US military history and has been one of the toughest to execute.’’

GE, based in Fairfield, Conn., has developed 80 percent of the alternate engine over the past 15 years and will “press our case in the US Senate and elsewhere’’ to restore funding, Immelt wrote. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

There are six stops in Iowa. There are five in South Carolina. The final stop is at a Books-A-Million in Destin, Fla.

But the man who proclaims he is “seriously contemplating’’ another run for the presidency has no plans to spend time in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

“You ever been to New Hampshire in February?’’ he told reporters yesterday at a tea hosted by the Christan Science Monitor. “My Southern blood isn’t acclimated.’’

The presidential race is still early, with no announced candidates. But as other presidential hopefuls camp out in the Granite State, Huckabee’s whirlwind book tour schedule provides some indication of the strategy he would employ in a presidential primary race.

In addition to Iowa and South Carolina, the former Arkansas governor has stops throughout his Southern base — in Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia.

Huckabee downplayed any political decision-making that went into the three-week tour, saying it was put together by a publisher concerned with selling books and not a political strategist trying to win votes.

“They’re not particularly interested in the politics of the stops,’’ he said of his publisher. “They’re looking at whether or not there’s a market, they believe, for the books. Maybe the reason I didn’t spend three weeks in Portland, Oregon, or Vermont might have to do something with the fact that there may not be as much of a market for a conservative book there than there would in Iowa, or South Carolina, Alabama, or Texas.’’

Huckabee placed a distant third in the 2008 New Hampshire primary — behind John McCain and Mitt Romney — and Romney has been far ahead in early polls this year.

Sarah Palin, another would-be presidential candidate, has not made any trips to New Hampshire since October 2008 and last year also skipped the state during a book tour. — MATT VISER