Gentle, gentle, certain areas. Please just don't cut here.We don't cut here.

VOA: standard.other

Adding to the ambiguity, unlike issues such as Social Security or Medicare reform, the politics here aren't clear cut either.

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You don't look at a tree and say, well, I've cut the branch here and cut it here and all of a sudden I've got a baseball bat.

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"Tinkering here and there and hoping we'll drift to a solution simply won't cut it any more, " he said.

BBC: David Cameron urges European leaders to 'be bolder'