Two days before a long-awaited speech on religion, politics and his Mormon faith, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spent a low-key lunchtime yesterday at Concord's Cat 'n' Fiddle restaurant touting his call to cut taxes and spending.

Romney zipped through a PowerPoint presentation on historical tax rates, entitlement programs and the size of the federal budget. He spoke at the Concord Rotary Club lunch, while members ate tuna fish sandwiches and french fries and dozens of reporters tapped on their BlackBerries in the back.

Among Romney's prescriptions is a cap on domestic discretionary spending at a rate below inflation. He promised to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent. He also promised to conduct a "stem to stern review" of federal programs looking for wastefulness.

"When I was in retail, we used to look at the different sections of the store . . . and if a section wasn't doing well, we got rid of it and put something else in there," he said. "That doesn't happen in government very much."

Romney passed up an opportunity to lift the curtain on his religion speech, scheduled for tomorrow in Texas. When an audience member told Romney that he shouldn't be judged on his religion, Romney responded in full: "Thank you very much, very kind, I appreciate that."

Accompanying Romney on his swing through New Hampshire yesterday was fellow former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, whom Romney dubbed "Big Red."

Weld was called in to challenge arguments from two former Massachusetts state officials who have endorsed the presidential campaign of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Last week, the Giuliani campaign called a press conference with former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci and former state treasurer Joe Malone in which they criticized Romney for not cutting that state's income tax to 5 percent, as promised.

But Weld, who said fiscal issues are his favorite, brushed aside those criticisms. "I believe there were 19 tax cuts when governor Romney was in office. That's just a fact," he said. "And what he's proposed for Washington is the most developed of any of the candidates."

Weld touted Romney as a Washington outsider and a insatiable consumer of data. "This guy's a vacuum cleaner for facts!" he said.

Romney's fact-finding was on display for the Rotary in understated black-and-maroon slides that named problems such as "Discretionary Spending Binge" and "Entitlement System Facing Demographic Flood."

In response to a question from the audience, he said that his fine-toothed budget review would go for the Pentagon, too.

"I want to do that for our weapons systems and say, 'Now, are we doing this because it makes some congressman happy in a tight district?' " he said. "And are there programs that are just unnecessarily expensive? Let's just stop doing those."

The overall size of the Pentagon budget probably wouldn't be cut, he said, but he hoped to spend smarter and refocus on increasing the size of the military, acquiring better weapons and providing better care for veterans.

"I'm looking forward to having people like yourselves in the private sector go through the defense budget, defense programs, one after the other," he said.

Asked about the apparent deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations, Romney said continuing diplomatic relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin are key. That relationship has been fruitful in some areas, such as ongoing efforts to safeguard nuclear weapons, Romney said. Russia could also be a key partner in fighting "radical violent jihad," Romney said.

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