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If you want ideas on how to save money, ask the people who spend it.

That’s what President Obama did when he began the SAVE Awards two years ago.

SAVE is one of those terms that sounds like someone came up with a smart acronym, then searched for words to fit it. It stands for Securing Americans’ Value and Efficiency — a bureaucratic mouthful. The shorter version also is appropriate, because federal employees recommended more than 18,000 ways Uncle Sam can save money through the SAVE program. About 20 were incorporated into Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal 2012. The Office of Management and Budget expects the ideas to save $867.5 million through 2015.

Trudy Givens, a Bureau of Prisons employee from Portage, Wis., submitted the winning suggestion. Like many of the other ideas, Givens’s suggestion is so simple, yet so effective, you wonder why Sam didn’t think of it earlier.

Her idea: Send the Federal Register — a daily compendium of government regulations and notices — to federal employees online, rather than by snail mail, with an estimated savings of $16 million through 2015.

“In 2010, there were more than 4,700 subscriptions across the entire Federal Government. Based on Government Printing Office estimates, this proposed reduction would save taxpayers up to $4 million (annually) in postage and printing costs,” according to the budget proposal.

I wanted to speak with Givens but couldn’t reach her. She explained how she developed her suggestion in a White House video: “The Federal Register is all online now. It’s easily accessible to look things up. By the time we get the hard copy we’ve already researched what we need to see.”

Unfortunately, Givens, a business administrator at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oxford, Wis., won’t get a cut of the millions her idea will save. But she did have an Oval Office meeting with the president, who signed a certificate honoring her.

“Your mom, she just has common sense,” Obama told Givens’s 12-year-old daughter, Jessica, who was with her mom and dad, Lance Givens, at the White House. Trudy and Lance are 19-year veterans of the Bureau of Prisons.

Even more important than the winning idea “is the change of culture,” Jeff Zients, the president’s chief performance officer, said on the video. Obama’s meeting with Givens “sends a real signal to the federal workforce that the president believes that the best ideas for improving efficiency, saving money, making the government more effective exists on the front line. And that culture change, where there’s a recognition that’s where the best ideas are, is the most sustainable way to improve government service.”

The Internet is going to be a big part of that. In addition to Givens’s idea, two of the other four finalists also suggested using the Web to increase efficiency and save money.

Paul Behe, a paralegal specialist for the Homeland Security Department in Cleveland, suggested advertising property seized by Customs and Border Protection online instead of in newspapers. That’s not good for the ailing newspaper industry, but the OMB pegs the government savings through 2015 at $5 million.

“After having processed the advertising for the Cleveland Port Office, I thought there had to be a more efficient way to comply with the statutes,” which require print advertising, Behe said by e-mail. “We used to process advertising for the Department of Justice and when I stopped seeing their advertising requests, I contacted the local offices and found that they were advertising online.”

Thomas Koenning, of Littleton, Colo., works for the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA) Information Technology Center and suggested requiring mining companies to use online reporting forms.

“Although mine operators and contractors are required by regulation to file quarterly data with MSHA, the agency is not required to mail the multi-part forms each quarter,” said Koenning via e-mail. “The forms are mailed as a courtesy.”

Estimated savings, $302,000 by 2015.

The other finalist was Marjorie Cook, a Gobles, Mich., food inspector with the Agriculture Department. Labs send empty containers, that once contained samples, to the department using overnight delivery. Cook suggested saving money by having the empties returned by regular ground delivery. That will save more than $1 million through 2015, according to the budget plan.

A million here, a million there — it adds up.

“It’s really encouraging that Washington is, you know, requesting and implementing some of these ideas,” Givens said, “because what we see everyday isn’t something that people in Washington are seeing.”

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Think of Washington’s initial 2011 budget fights as spring training — for a season about to open in a hailstorm.

Twice, Congress and the Obama White House have agreed on temporary spending bills that trim spending and keep the government open. Last week’s version averted a shutdown, at least until April 8.

But the pace of play is accelerating, under deteriorating conditions. And practices so far have produced little evidence of confidence-building.

Republican and Democratic negotiators bought time by cutting the easiest $10 billion, from discredited projects and programs. Closing the remaining $50 billion gap for the last half of this fiscal year will require steeper reductions from a small slice of the budget.

“There needs to be a global solution,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, one of a half-dozen senators from both parties seeking a long-term fix. Meantime, he said, “There’s growing frustration with this inability to predict how long the government is going to stay open.”

Yet a comprehensive fix means two teams with weak batting averages must hit a series of 100 mile-per-hour fastballs.

For most Republicans, “global” means cutting not just discretionary spending, but also the enormous “entitlements” of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, promises his forthcoming 2012 blueprint will take that risky step.

For most Democrats, “global” means collecting additional taxes, as well. That step, under discussion by Mr. Warner’s “Gang of Six,” is also risky.

So is the prospect that the United States might shake investor confidence by defaulting on its obligations. That could happen if Congress fails to raise the federal debt limit once the current ceiling is reached sometime this spring.

Leading Republicans say they will raise it only if Democrats accept more spending reductions. As if the showdown needed any more complications, the military confrontation with Libya throws a curve at the possibility of cuts to the Pentagon budget.

In other words, the game will not get easier after Opening Day.

Thinking Long Term

One reason: some on both sides feel they are losing.

Conservative Republicans think that slow-motion, piecemeal spending cuts have undercut momentum from their election triumph last November. By defying their leaders and opposing last week’s stopgap “continuing resolution,” 54 House Republicans signaled that unease.

Liberal Democrats consider spending cuts economically counterproductive amid high unemployment, and see further reductions as threats to cherished priorities. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, sought to draw a line by vowing, “I will not support tinkering with Social Security.”

Steve Bell, a former Senate Republican budget aide now at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said “the reason I am pessimistic is that the scar tissue” from the from stopgap spending battle could affect negotiations over 2012 and beyond.

A longer-term negotiation is what Mr. Warner and five colleagues, from both parties, are conducting. The White House is encouraging their effort from afar as a potential way out if negotiations falter on short-term spending and the debt limit.

The six senators are using recommendations from President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission as a template. Neither the president nor Republican leaders has embraced those recommendations, however.

“Nobody ever won the office pool by betting on the success of bipartisanship,” said Bruce Reed, who assisted the deficit-reduction commission and is now chief of staff to Vice  President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “But the Gang of Six is bringing Republicans and Democrats together, the way Washington should work.”

Possible Compromise

Prospects for compromise appeared to brighten last week when 64 senators, 32 from each party, urged Mr. Obama to seek a “comprehensive” solution touching all three hot-buttons — discretionary spending, entitlements, and taxes.

But the path from hortatory letter to long-term deal is steep. Newly empowered House Republicans would have to accept more taxes ; Senate Democrats, fighting to keep their majority in 2012, would have to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Referring to the Gang of Six, Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said, “The probability that their fruit will ripen to an eatable state is very low.”

A least-common-denominator outcome might yield targets for limiting spending and deficits as a proportion of the economy. As with the 1980s-era “Gramm-Rudman” efforts, it could include enforcement mechanisms to require later policy choices for meeting those targets.

But even that possible fallback has not eased fears of stalemate. The Federal Reserve chairman,
Ben S. Bernanke, has warned that tying a debt-limit increase to a long-term budget deal would risk default and fresh financial “chaos” as the nation tries to leave the 2008 crisis behind.

“The idea that this time some folks want to start the fire. . .” Mr. Warner said, his words trailing off. “You just have to hope cooler heads will prevail.”

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Curious how much of your tax bill last year went to pay for the retirement fund at the Central Intelligence Agency? Want to know what your contribution to foreign aid was in 2010? How about the Postal Service?

A new online tool by Third Way, a think tank formed five years ago by former staffers in President Bill Clinton’s administration, has all the answers.

A married couple with two kids who made about $70,000 last year would have paid about $7,000 to Uncle Sam, according to Third Way.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

* Of that $7,000, the Third Way calculator says that $1,448.28 would be spent on defense, with about 59 cents for that C.I.A. retirement system.

* Foreign aid would get about $39.64 from that family.

* The post office would get about $9.76.

The folks at Third Way call the results of the calculator “your federal tax receipt” and say that they were inspired to debunk what they call “the rampant misinformation about the budget and deficit.”

Sean Gibbons, a spokesman for the group, notes that as many as 25 percent of people in surveys have said they believe a fourth of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. In fact, it is only about 0.6 percent of the budget.

Coming in the middle of a fight over the budget between President Obama and Republicans in the House, reporters and others will find it a useful research tool.

But budget geeks will just call it plain fun.

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Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama signed an electronic “white board” as he met with music students at a school in Arlington, Va.

2:22 p.m. | Updated President Obama called on Congress to revamp the “No Child Left Behind” education law by the time students start a new school year in September, urging lawmakers to “seize this education moment.”

Mr. Obama made the remarks on Monday at a school in Virginia, using the backdrop of a classroom to urge changes to a law that Democrats and Republicans agree is broken.

“I want every child in the country to head back to school in the fall knowing that their education is America’s priority,” the president said. “The goals of No Child Left Behind were the right goals. But what hasn’t worked is denying teachers, schools and states what they need to meet these goals.”

Mr. Obama last week met with lawmakers from both parties in an attempt to jump-start the debate over reauthorizing the law, known officially as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Enacted in 2002, it was one of President George W. Bush’s signature pieces of legislation.

But while both sides agree that the existing law needs and overhaul, there are differences over what needs to be done. Democrats have generally favored greater investment in schools while conservatives have pushed for more local control over decisions.

Unions have also complained about the president’s push for connecting teacher pay to judgments about classroom performance.

In his remarks, Mr. Obama called for changes to the education law that would push more control to local and state governments, improve the quality of testing, demand increased standards and increase accountability by principals.

In the face of an ongoing budget dispute with Republicans, Mr. Obama also said efforts to remake the law must be supported by the funding necessary to make it work.

“A budget that sacrifices our commitment to education would be a budget that’s sacrificing our country’s future. That would be a budget that sacrifices our children’s future. And I will not let it happen,” Mr. Obama said. “So yes, I’m determined to cut our deficits, but I refuse to do it by telling students here, who are so full of promise, that we’re not willing to invest in your future.”

UPDATE: Representative John Kline ,the chairman of the House education committee, said in a statement Monday that “the president’s remarks affirm the importance of fixing the nation’s broken education system. As we develop targeted, fiscally responsible reforms, the Committee on Education and the Workforce continues to work with school officials and state and local leaders to learn about the tools they need to prepare students for the future. We need to take the time to get this right – we cannot allow an arbitrary timeline to undermine quality reforms that encourage innovation, flexibility, and parental involvement.”

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The House and Senate are preparing to give themselves another three weeks to resolve their so-far intractable spending fight before heading out on recess for one of those weeks.

The new three-week extension, which cuts $6 billion from spending on current programs, is set to be on the House floor Tuesday and then win approval in the Senate and be signed by President Obama before the current two-week measure expires Friday.

But there is a growing sentiment in Congress that lawmakers cannot keep funding the government in fits and starts and that the two sides must work out a deal  to keep the government open through Sept. 30 before the new bill expires April 8.

Still, Republicans and Democrats remain tens of billions of dollars apart on how deeply to cut, with Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, urging caution during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We cannot solve this problem in six months,” Mr. Durbin said of mounting budget deficits. “We have to look at it in the medium and long term for the good of this nation and for our financial reputation in the world.”

Republicans said they intended to see the temporary measure win passage but continued to hit President Obama for not playing more of a leading role in the spending negotiations.

“He enlisted the vice president to be the negotiator,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 House Republican, said on CNN. “They came in for one meeting, then the vice president left the country and we’re only funded for two weeks. How serious are they about solving this problem?”

President Obama is scheduled to leave at the end of the week for a trip to South America, limiting his direct participation in any talks but Congress will be gone at the same time.

The temporary funding bill would bring to $10 billion the amount of cuts that lawmakers have enacted in recent weeks as they have pushed stop-gap measures as a way to avoid a government shutdown. But both Democrats and Republicans say they have to get beyond the short-term budgeting, which could cause bookkeeping problems and other difficulties for federal agencies.

While they continue to bicker over the broad level of cuts, there is one line-item that House Republicans seem intent on taking on by itself. With National Public Radio in the middle of controversy, the leadership plans to bring a measure to the floor this week going after funding for N.P.R., a long-time target of conservative Republicans.

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In Today’s Times:

–If Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seems impervious to efforts to oust him, it could be because he has “tens of billions” stashed away that he can use to defend his power. The Times’s Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau write, “The possibility that he could resist the rebellion in his country for a sustained period could place greater pressure for action on the Obama administration and European leaders, who had hoped the Libyan leader would be forced from power quickly.”

–Carl Hulse writes that the Obama administration and Congress are headed back into budget negotiations after Senate lawmakers rejected competing plans on Wednesday. Mr. Hulse also reports that Republicans, responding to criticism that they have focused too much on cutting spending, plan to put the focus on job creation in a forum with business leaders next week.

–Sam Dillon weighs the potential consequences of the Education Department’s estimate that four out of every five of the nation’s 100,000 public schools are likely to receive failing grades under the No Child Left Behind Act this year. President Obama is likely to use this estimate on Thursday when he meets with lawmakers to discuss revising the law.

–NPR faces a vacuum in its leadership ranks as it fights to hold onto federal funds, which prop up many of its affiliate radio stations. Elizabeth Jensen and Brian Stelter report that Vivian Schiller, the network’s chief executive, stepped down late Tuesday amid a swell of controversy over partisan statements made by one of the public broadcaster’s fund-raising executives, who resigned Tuesday. Republicans in Congress have begun fresh efforts to cut financing to NPR’s parent company, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which received more than $430 million in the current fiscal year that ends in September.

–Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators will return from their self-imposed exile today after Republicans abruptly pushed through a bill Wednesday night stripping government workers of most of their collective bargaining rights. Monica Davey explains how Republicans were able to maneuver around absent Democrats. The measure is expected to be approved Thursday by the state Assembly and signed later by Gov. Scott Walker.

Around the Web:
–The Wall Street Journal reports that a bipartisan effort that would force Congress to trim $4 trillion from the deficit over a decade is picking up support although it still faces a number of hurdles.

–Roll Call reports that some conservatives on Capitol Hill are threatening to sink a long-term budget resolution if it includes money for Planned Parenthood.

Happening in Washington:
–The president and Michelle Obama will host a summit on bullying prevention at the White House, followed by a meeting with lawmakers to discuss revising the No Child Left Behind Act. Mr. Obama also has a meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

–Hearings on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism begin at 10 a.m. in the House.

–Today in economics: The Department of Labor will release weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m., followed by regional and state unemployment for January at 10 a.m. At the same time, Freddie Mac unveils weekly mortgage rates and the Census bureau distributes its quarterly survey of the services sector. At 2 p.m., the Treasury Department releases the federal budget for February.

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