Obama wins jet engine budget fight

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama won a showdown vote yesterday in the GOP-controlled House that would kill a costly alternative engine for the Pentagon's next-generation fighter jet.

The win by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates is a switch from where the House stood last year under Democratic control. It reflects a sustained administration push to win over the votes of scores of Republican freshmen elected last fall on campaign promises to cut the budget.

Many taxpayer watchdog groups also weighed in against the engine program, slated to cost $3 billion over the next few years and $450 million this year alone.

The 233-192 tally was a loss for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), whose state reaped thousands of jobs from the engine, built by the General Electric Co. and Rolls-Royce.

It was a big victory for lawmakers from Democrat-dominated Connecticut, where the main F-35 fighter engine is built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp. Former President George W. Bush had also tried to kill the second engine.

The Democratic-controlled Senate supports the second engine. That, combined with Boehner's backing, could yet keep the program alive.

The showdown vote came just hours after Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen testified against the alternative engine before the Armed Services Committee, which has repeatedly backed it.

"I've been doing money a long time, I can't make sense out of a second engine," Mullen said.

The vote was an early test for 87 GOP freshmen who confronted a choice between cutting spending and injecting competition into the F-35 program, the costliest weapons program in Defense Department history.

The money for the engine was included in a $1.2-trillion spending bill that would make deep cuts while wrapping up the unfinished business lawmakers inherited after last year's collapse of the budget process. That includes $1.03 trillion for agency operating budgets that need annual approval by Congress and $158 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Debate on the bill is expected to take all week. A frosty reception awaits the bill in the Democratic-controlled Senate, which won't take up its version until next month.

So it'll require passage of a separate short-term government funding bill by March 4 to prevent a government shutdown that neither side says it wants.