NATION & WORLD
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 THE NEW MEXICAN
A-3
Bipartisan negotiators reach modest budget pact By Andrew Taylor and David Espo The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators reached a modest budget agreement Tuesday to restore about $63 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Pentagon, with votes expected in both houses in the next several days. Officials said the increases would be offset by various spending reductions and increased fees elsewhere in the budget totaling about $85 billion over a decade, leaving enough for a largely symbolic cut of more than $20 billion in the nation’s $17 trillion debt. The deal “reduces the deficit by $23 billion and it does not raise taxes.
It cuts spending in a smarter way” than the ones in effect, said Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee and was his party’s negotiator in several weeks of secretive talks. His Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, said, “We have broken through the partisanship and gridlock” that could have produced a government shutdown in January. The offsetting deficit cuts include a requirement for newly hired federal workers to make larger contributions to their own pensions, as well as an increase in a federal airport security fee that would add $5 to the cost of a typical roundtrip flight. Also included were unspecified savings from military
retirement programs. Officials said Democrats had failed in their bid to include an extension of benefits for workers unemployed longer than 26 weeks. The program expires on Dec. 28, when payments will be cut off for an estimated 1.3 million individuals. Congressional aides predicted bipartisan approval in both houses, despite grumbling from liberals over the omission of the unemployment extension, and even though tea party-aligned groups have already begun pushing Republican conservatives to oppose it. The budget deal was one of a handful of measures left on Congress’ to-do list near the end of a year that produced little by way of compromise. Announcement of the deal came
Study finds pay gains for young women The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Young American women are increasingly likely to receive pay nearly equal to their male counterparts, with earnings at 93 percent of men, a new study finds. Still, those women are as pessimistic as their mothers and grandmothers regarding gender equality. A report for release Wednesday by the Pew Research Center paints a mixed picture. While women under 32 now have higher rates of college completion than men that age, the analysis shows their hourly earnings will slip further behind by the women’s mid-30s, if the experience of the past three
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decades is a guide. That widening gap is due in part to many women who take time off or reduce their hours to start families. Other factors cited in the report are gender stereotyping, discrimination, weaker professional networks and women’s hesitancy to push for raises and promotions, which together may account for 20 percent to 40 percent of the pay gap. In all, 75 percent of women ages 18-32 say the U.S. needs to do more to bring about equality in the workplace, a percentage similar to baby boomer women ages 49-67 and higher than other age groups. Some 57 percent of young men answered that way. Even so, just 15 percent of
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The same was not true of conservative organizations, which attacked the proposal as a betrayal of a hard-won 2011 agreement that reduced government spending and is counted as among the main accomplishments of tea party-aligned Republicans who came to power earlier the same year in the House. Americans for Prosperity issued a midmorning statement saying that GOP lawmakers should uphold current spending levels. Otherwise, the group said, “congressional Republicans are joining liberal Democrats in breaking their word to the American people to finally begin reining in government overspending that has left us over $17 trillion in debt.”
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young women say they have been discriminated against because of their gender. “Today’s generation of young women is entering the labor force near parity with men in terms of earnings and extremely well prepared in terms of their educational attainment,” said Kim Parker, associate director with the Pew Social & Demographic Trends Project. “They feel empowered in many ways, yet when they look at the workplace, they see it as a ‘man’s world’ with the deck stacked against them.”
in the form of a statement that the two negotiators, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who planned a news conference to announce details. The lawmakers chair the budget committees in the two houses of Congress and negotiated the deal in secretive talks over recent weeks. Officials said that under the agreement, an estimated $63 billion in automatic spending cuts would be restored through the end of the next budget year, which runs to Sept. 30, 2015. Officials who described the details in advance of the news conference did so on the condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to speak on the record.
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