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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Looming Federal Fiscal Cliff Could Cost 24,000 Hoosier Jobs

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Tuesday, September 11, 2012   

INDIANAPOLIS - A looming budget battle in Washington could cost nearly 24,000 jobs in Indiana. Lawmakers last year gave themselves until the end of this year to reduce the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade. If Congress can't agree on a plan, automatic cuts will kick in. Known as "sequestration," the cuts were designed to be unpopular and painful to all sides, as an incentive to compromise.

But tax-policy analyst Ali Mickelson fears partisan politics this election season could prevent a more productive solution.

"That's sort of the reason that this sequestration is looming. It's because of that partisan divide. Nobody's been able to agree, and that may continue to be the case."

Republicans accuse Democrats of being willing to gut the Defense Department, while Democrats say the GOP is trying to protect tax breaks for the wealthy. According to calculations in a recent George Mason University report, Indiana's reduced federal funding would remove about $1.2 billion from the state's economy.

More than half of the Hoosier job losses would come from defense cuts. Much of the rest, Mickelson says, would affect education. But as tough as that sounds, she thinks sequestration might actually be preferable to some alternatives.

"If we have, in response to avoiding sequestration, sort of a rushed one-sided budget that goes through, that could potentially cost more jobs, more services, that could be bigger cuts."

The automatic cuts were a provision of the Budget Control Act of 2011. They would go into effect in January, and could send the country back into recession during the first half of next year, according to the George Mason University study, with 2.14 million job losses nationwide.

See the report at www.aia-aerospace.org.




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