(Continued from page 26)

want to use the tax debate to portray congressional Republicans as obstructionists and Romney as a defender of the wealthy who is willing to push an across-the-board extension of the tax breaks at the expense of those earning more modest incomes.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats want to push tax cuts through the Senate for

companies that hire new workers, give raises or buy major new equipment this year.
• With neither party eager to let the other claim campaign-season victories, the ultimate fate of the roughly $29 billion legislation seems dubious. Debate was to begin Tuesday, though it was possible Republicans would use procedural blockades to quickly derail the measure.
• The legislation would grant tax credits -- which are subtracted from a company's tax bill -- equal to 10 percent of the amount its 2012 payroll exceeds the salaries it paid in 2011. The maximum credit would be $500,000, a figure that would disproportionately help smaller businesses.
• It would also let companies that buy major new property in 2012, such as machinery, deduct the entire cost of the purchase this year. Currently they can only deduct half the amount.
• In an election year in which the slumping economy gives President Barack Obama and the Senate's majority Democrats little to boast about, the proposal lets Democrats take the offensive on the tax issue while asserting they are trying to encourage job creation. It was reaching the floor days after the latest gloomy Labor Department report that a scant 80,000 jobs were created last month, leaving the unemployment rate at a rugged 8.2 percent.
• ___

• HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday urged Egypt's Islamist president and its military to settle their differences for the good of Egypt's people, or risk seeing their nation's democratic transition de

(Continued on page 28)