Word: backdowns
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George Bush has decided that, for a while at least, he can live without a capital-gains tax cut. After failing to force the Senate to include such a reduction in next year's budget bill, Bush abandoned the idea last week. The President's backdown could provide the basis for a compromise that would undo $16 billion in across-the-board spending cutbacks that went into effect last month. If no agreement can be reached, $8.1 billion will be slashed from popular programs such as Medicare and college loans...
...government's backdown reflected the growing strength of South Africa's black labor movement. Pretoria may have the military and police power to quell any serious civil disorder. Last week, for example, the government announced that ten more suspected terrorists had been killed. But prosperity in the country depends in large part on the labor of 6 million black workers. Many of them have become organized just in recent years, and their unions are now the closest thing to black political parties that exists in South Africa. In all, black and black-dominated unions have nearly doubled their membership since...
...workers did not win the complete cancellation of the price hikes: the government promised only to introduce them gradually and to offset their effects with cost of living payments to lower-income groups. Behind the official backdown: the knowledge that four times since the end of World War II there have been major revolts sparked by food-price protests...
...Backdown...
...backdown on forecasts of disaster may embarrass the Administration, which has been using the threat of drastic shortages as the main argument for a bill to decontrol prices of newly drilled natural gas rapidly and permanently. Last week the FPC granted rate increases that by July will raise the price of "old" gas in production before 1973 by 6?, to 29½? per 1,000 cu. ft. "New" gas from recently developed wells is going up 1?, to 52? per 1,000 cu. ft. But the Administration contends that these rises are insufficient to spur production of natural gas, which...