美国有线新闻 CNN 2012-10-22

 Federal authorities say they’ve broken it up and arrested the suspect as part of an undercover investigation¹. The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States. This one in New York is a regional branch of it. Officials say the suspect was planning to set off an explosion there with what he thought was a 1,000 pound bomb. No, it wasn’t real. The false explosives came from an undercover agent. Quazi Nafis is 21 years old. He is from Bangladesh. He came to US on a student visa. But prosecutors² say his real goal was to carry out a terrorist attack. He was arrested after he tried to set off the device. 

 

There are a lot of ways to pay for college. Scholarships, financial aid, savings³, working through it. Another option is student loans. Now, those have to be repaid, and a new report says today’s college seniors are graduating with more student loan debt, more money that has to be repaid than ever before. This reports says that two third of the class of 2011 has student loan debt, and the average borrower owed nearly $27,000. Part of this depends on what school you go to. At the colleges this study looked at, the low into the average debt per graduate was 3,000, the high end, more than 55,000. A couple of explanations were offered for the debt increase from previous years. One is rising tuition prices, the other is the tough job market for college graduates looking for work. 

 

What’s the word? The amount by which spending exceed income. Deficit⁴. That’s the word. 

 

Right now, the U.S. government is running a deficit, it has been for years, it’s the topic that comes up a lot in politics, and as you might expect, it’s come up a lot in this year’s presidential campaign. In fact, during this week’s debate between Barack Obama and Mitt⁵ Romney, the word deficit came up nearly 20 times. Both candidates have plans for how to deal with it, Tom Foreman compares their ideas. 

 

Both candidates have made it a cornerstone of this election to talk about the deficit, the difference between how much money our government is spending and how much it is taking in in taxes. This is the deficit right now, $1,090 billion. If we all wanted to pay it off, every man, woman and child in the country would have to kick in(捐款、交付) about $3,500. That’s a lot, and yet each candidate says confidently, I can reduce the deficit. How would they do that? Well, first, let’s talk about what they agree on. They all say that we’re going to have to contain the spending of the government and control it, but we’re also going to have to rewrite the tax code, and we have to get the economy moving again, because that’s what going to produce money and revenue, and really solve the problem, but beyond that, they don’t agree on much.

 

Let’s look at the Romney plan first. If these were to present everything he wants to spend money on, and he needs this much to cover it, he knows he’s not going to get it, because he has a deficit. So, how is he going to deal with that deficit? He says he’s going to do it with tax cuts. Now, tax cuts initially⁶ are going to make the deficit worse, so he needs to offset⁷ them. He says he’s going to do that by looking deductions⁹ and loopholes(漏洞), things that people use to avoid paying taxes. Says, he won’t go after things like the mortgage deduction⁸, or the health care deduction, things that many middle class people rely on, at least he suggests he won’t go after those, but that’s the problem. Economists¹⁰ say if you grab up all the other deductions that you might put on wealthier people and you’ll put them all back in this pile, it’s not going to be enough, you are going to end up eventually having to tax the middle class or watching the deficit just get bigger, at least based on the plan as I know it right now. 

 

Barack Obama, he has different version of the same song. He’s got all the things he wants to pay for, he also will not have all the money he needs for it. He is going to have a deficit too, and he says you can deal with it by taxing the wealthy. This is a popular plan with many voters, but it also has a fundamental flaw. There are just not that many wealthy people in the country. If you define wealthy as being people who individually make more than $200,000 a year, as he often does, for every one there is like that in the country, this is how many there are who don’t make that much money. You would have to tax these person at a much higher rate than the White House is talking about to solve this problem, and even then you probably wouldn’t get enough money to really make up the deficit. The simple truth is, both of these plans are woefully short on important details to tell us if they would really reduce the deficit.

1 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

2 prosecutors   

检举人( prosecutor的名词复数 )； 告发人； 起诉人； 公诉人

参考例句：

• In some places,public prosecutors are elected rather than appointed. 在有些地方，检察官是经选举而非任命产生的。 来自口语例句
• You've been summoned to the Prosecutors' Office, 2 days later. 你在两天以后被宣到了检察官的办公室。

3 savings   

n.存款，储蓄

参考例句：

• I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
• By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。

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 mitt   

n.棒球手套，拳击手套，无指手套；vt.铐住，握手

参考例句：

• I gave him a baseball mitt for his birthday.为祝贺他的生日，我送给他一只棒球手套。
• Tom squeezed a mitt and a glove into the bag.汤姆把棒球手套和手套都塞进袋子里。

6 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

7 offset   

n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿

参考例句：

• Their wage increases would be offset by higher prices.他们增加的工资会被物价上涨所抵消。
• He put up his prices to offset the increased cost of materials.他提高了售价以补偿材料成本的增加。

8 deduction   

n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎

参考例句：

• No deduction in pay is made for absence due to illness.因病请假不扣工资。
• His deduction led him to the correct conclusion.他的推断使他得出正确的结论。

9 deductions   

扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演

参考例句：

• Many of the older officers trusted agents sightings more than cryptanalysts'deductions. 许多年纪比较大的军官往往相信特务的发现，而不怎么相信密码分析员的推断。
• You know how you rush at things,jump to conclusions without proper deductions. 你知道你处理问题是多么仓促，毫无合适的演绎就仓促下结论。

10 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》