CNN 2011-04-18

Yesterday was Thursday Thursday, today is Friday Friday. And you know what that means. CNN Student News is breaking down everything from budgets to baseball.

It’s Financial Literacy Month. Monday is tax day, debate raging about the government’s budget. You know we are starting with the money story. First things first.

The US House voted yesterday on the 2011 budget which runs through this September. The bill would cut around 38 billion dollars from what the government will spend this year. Its next stop was the Senate. And you can go to the cnn.com for the latest update on this bill. Remember it has to pass both the House and the Senate before the President can sign it into law. And all of this is just for the remaining few months in the 2011 budget. There’s even bigger fight brewing¹ over the 2012 budget. Democrats² led by the President and Republicans who lead the US House of Representatives don’t see eye to eye on how much the government should spend or tax. Mary Snow dives into their differences.

He said it before. And President Obama vowed³ again not to extend Bush-era tax cuts for families making more than 250,000 dollars a year. "We can not afford one trillion dollars’ worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society." If those tax cuts are not renewed, it would mean that taxes would go up for about 2% of the population. The President calls them "the richest Americans". But budget experts say it’s not enough to help lower the deficit⁴, even with spending cuts. Here’s a hypothetical scenario⁵. The Congressional Budget Office crunched⁶ the numbers. If taxes were rate 1% for people on the top 2 tax brackets, it would amount to 115 billion dollars over a decade. But raise taxes by that same amount 1%  on all the other brackets ,it comes to just under 500 billion dollars. CNN Money’s Jeanne Sahadi says there are other reasons why the richest Americans can’t generate the kind of revenue that’s needed.

The income of the very wealthy tends to be more volatile⁷ than  income of most people ,because it’s tied up with investments and when the economy goes out ,often their income gets hurt. So you are not gonna get as much revenue from them as you might expect especially when you needed in a downturn. And two, there're just not that many rich people much as we think, you know, there are a lot of them. They are not enough to carry the country in terms of deficit reduction.

But with the 2012 presidential election around the corner, budget experts say no one wants to raise taxes on the middle class, Ron Haskins who served as a senior advisor⁸ on welfare policy to President George W. Bush says both democrats and republicans are wrong.

Republicans are betting that if they say no new taxes, the American people like that would try to do it all on the spending side. The problem is spending affects American public, too. A lot of people are gonna lose their benefits. And Democrats say we'll just tax the rich and not the middle class, but that won’t produce enough revenue, so that’s not gonna work, either.

And if the last fight over the bushier tax cuts is any indication, this will be a furious battle. The President had vowed many times not to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. But in December, he did. He says he did so to prevent a tax hike on middle class Americans.

Mary Snow CNN New York.

1 brewing   

n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• It was obvious that a big storm was brewing up. 很显然，一场暴风雨正在酝酿中。
• She set about brewing some herb tea. 她动手泡一些药茶。

2 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 vowed   

起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• He vowed quite solemnly that he would carry out his promise. 他非常庄严地发誓要实现他的诺言。
• I vowed to do more of the cooking myself. 我发誓自己要多动手做饭。

4 deficit   

n.亏空，亏损；赤字，逆差

参考例句：

• The directors have reported a deficit of 2.5 million dollars.董事们报告赤字为250万美元。
• We have a great deficit this year.我们今年有很大亏损。

5 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

6 crunched   

v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的过去式和过去分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄

参考例句：

• Our feet crunched on the frozen snow. 我们的脚嘎吱嘎吱地踩在冻雪上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. 他咬紧骨头，使劲地嚼。 来自英汉文学 - 热爱生命

7 volatile   

adj.反复无常的，挥发性的，稍纵即逝的，脾气火爆的；n.挥发性物质

参考例句：

• With the markets being so volatile,investments are at great risk.由于市场那么变化不定，投资冒着很大的风险。
• His character was weak and volatile.他这个人意志薄弱，喜怒无常。

8 advisor   

n.顾问，指导老师，劝告者

参考例句：

• They employed me as an advisor.他们聘请我当顾问。
• The professor is engaged as a technical advisor.这位教授被聘请为技术顾问。