Some Democrats are hoping to make the bitter pill easier to swallow by securing other provisions they favor.

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These include specially shaped cups as well as gels or sprays that make the pills slippery and easier to swallow.

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The Senate bill would also include a boost for businesses by allowing firms to adjust their accounting to make it easier to swallow losses.

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Mr Gummer says the pill would be easier to swallow if rail travellers in the east felt they had a modern and efficient train service.

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The Producer Price Index was a little easier to swallow.

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We found ourselves tapping at the panel simply out of habit, but quickly adapted to the non-touch model -- the comfortable, responsive keyboard and clickpad certainly make that omission easier to swallow.

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But perhaps the tough times we've weathered will make this an easier pill to swallow.

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The Fed's next step could be a cut in the fed funds rate, or, a move that hasn't been seen lately, a cut in the discount rate to make it easier for banks to swallow their pride.

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If caloric restriction has such a huge benefit, couldn't we get it in an easier-to-swallow package?

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Within the single-currency area competitiveness has to be regained the hard way by pushing down domestic costs or increasing productivity rather than the easier-to-swallow medicine of devaluation.

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In 1980, Reagan emphasized an easier-to-swallow message of tax cuts, not spending cuts -- and indeed promised that he'd protect the Medicare program he'd opposed when it was created in the mid-1960s.

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Mordashov's decision to take a smaller bite of Luxembourg-based Arcelor--210 million new shares, or about 25% of the enlarged company, instead of the previously proposed 295 million shares, which represented 32%--may make the Kremlin-backed oligarch's plans easier for investors to swallow.

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Ingestible sensor chips are an idea a little easier for most people to swallow.

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But that didn't make Triestina's move any easier for its fans to swallow.

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The levity in the sitcom made it easier for many viewers -- and me -- to swallow.

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