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As we near the end of 2013, NPR is taking a look at the numbers that tell the story of this year. Numbers that, if you really understand them, give insight into the world we're living in, right now. Over the next two weeks, you'll hear the stories behind these numbers, which range from zero to 1 trillion.

Today's figure: Half a million. That's how many people there are who likely qualify but have yet to apply for the Obama administration's program known as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA allows young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to avoid deportation and to get a work permit for two years.

The DACA program was announced in 2012. For months after, undocumented young people — most of whom were Latino — applied by the hundreds of thousands. It wasn't the DREAM Act they were pushing Congress for, but it was a temporary substitute. That flood has now slowed to a trickle. Eligible young people are no longer coming forward in large numbers on their own

"They're out there. We just wish we had more resources to go out and do DACA-specific outreach," says Amanda Chavez Doupe, who often meets with legal residents who want to become citizens. The community outreach worker for Catholic Charities in Los Angeles always tells groups about deferred action, too.

Adam Luna of Own the Dream says the biggest challenge is identifying potential applicants and overcoming misinformation about eligibility.

"People who didn't go to college think that they don't qualify. People who are young, and young parents of 14- [and] 15-year-olds don't realize that people that young can apply," Luna says.

The Washington-based Migration Policy Institute estimates a total of 1.1 million people are eligible for DACA. Of those, the largest group, by far, were born in Mexico. They, along with other Latin Americans, also make up the largest percentage of people who have already applied.

Other groups have not been as organized, especially people brought illegally as children from many Asian countries. Only 16 percent of eligible Filipinos and just 9 percent of Chinese who don't have authorization to be in the U.S. have applied for DACA. Tiffany Panlilio, who works with the organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice, says part of the problem is cultural — organizers have to overcome a social stigma among Filipinos over admitting that they're undocumented.

Code Switch

After Drop, Number Of Immigrants Illegally In U.S. Levels Off

At the moment, Washington fiscal policy is a good news, bad news story.

The good news is that the budget agreement, overwhelmingly passed by the House last week in a bipartisan vote, is likely to be approved by the Senate this week. That takes another costly government shutdown off the table.

The bad news? Another debt ceiling fight, with all the attendant risks of a U.S. government default, appears to be right around the corner.

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who was lead GOP negotiator on the pending budget deal, raised the specter of another debt ceiling standoff over the weekend when he said on Fox News Sunday: "We don't want nothing out of this debt limit. We're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight."

Notice that he said "fight." He's not mincing words.

That's consistent with what Ryan has said before. During the government shutdown, when Republicans were seeking an exit from that morass, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the debt ceiling was where the fight over spending cuts should be waged. That was the case he made to fellow Republican House members as well.

All the while, he rejected President Obama's repeatedly stated position that there would be no negotiating over the debt ceiling, saying other presidents — including Obama — had set precedents by engaging in debt ceiling horse trading.

It's unlikely Ryan will back down from this position. One reason he was able to sell the present two-year budget deal to the Republican conference was that he had credibility as a fiscal conservative who has pushed hard for entitlement reform and against tax increase.

Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, is still thought to have ambitions for either the White House or House speakership. For that reason, it's unlikely he would go out of his way to antagonize conservatives.

That places him on a collision course with the White House, where press secretary Jay Carney on Monday yet again repeated that the president doesn't intend to negotiate over the debt ceiling.

"We have not and will not change our position, nor do we expect Republicans to travel down that road again, because one, so many of them have said they won't, including those who endorsed the approach in October, and two, because that approach and pursuit was so disastrous for them and for the economy and for the middle class," Carney said.

"So, you know, I'm not going to anticipate a decision by Republicans to do that again, to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, because we don't believe they — obviously, that they should, and nor do we believe that they will. The president's position has not and will not change."

So there it is: Ryan says there will be no clean debt ceiling bill if Republicans have anything to say about it, and the administration says negotiations over the debt ceiling are a nonstarter. It's a perfect recipe for another default scare early in a midterm election year, sometime in March to be somewhat more precise.

That happens to be right about when the 2014 primary season gets underway. Which means many Republicans will be under maximum grass-roots pressure to vote against a clean debt ceiling.

So if the two-year budget agreement represented a break in the partisan clouds that have long hung over the nation's capital, it is likely to be only the briefest of openings.

She's not the first woman to head a global corporation.

Ginni Rometty runs IBM, and Indra Nooyi heads PepsiCo. Don't forget Ursula Burns at Xerox and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard. There's Marissa Mayer at Yahoo.

Still, when Mary Barra emerged on Tuesday as the new chief executive of General Motors, the announcement felt historic. Next month, the 51-year-old daughter of a GM factory worker will succeed retiring Dan Akerson as leader of the biggest U.S. automaker.

The automotive sphere has been seen as a guy thing since the first oil-splattered cars started rolling down dirt roads in the late 1800s. Even now in Saudi Arabia, women risk violence or arrest just for sitting behind the wheel of a car.

But in Detroit, Barra leapt ahead of men such as Mark Reuss, president of GM North America; Dan Ammann, chief financial officer; and Steve Girsky, vice chairman.

"It is remarkable because the auto industry has always been such a male-dominated industry," says Jerry Jasinowski, an economist and past president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Just 1 in 5 workers in the auto industry is a woman, and a mere 4 percent of CEOs at all major U.S. companies are female. So Barra's promotion is a big deal. On the other hand, auto analysts say her elevation should not come as a surprise to anyone at GM because her career path has been so steady.

At the moment, Washington fiscal policy is a good news, bad news story.

The good news is that the budget agreement, overwhelmingly passed by the House last week in a bipartisan vote, is likely to be approved by the Senate this week. That takes another costly government shutdown off the table.

The bad news? Another debt ceiling fight, with all the attendant risks of a U.S. government default, appears to be right around the corner.

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who was lead GOP negotiator on the pending budget deal, raised the specter of another debt ceiling standoff over the weekend when he said on Fox News Sunday: "We don't want nothing out of this debt limit. We're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight."

Notice that he said "fight." He's not mincing words.

That's consistent with what Ryan has said before. During the government shutdown, when Republicans were seeking an exit from that morass, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the debt ceiling was where the fight over spending cuts should be waged. That was the case he made to fellow Republican House members as well.

All the while, he rejected President Obama's repeatedly stated position that there would be no negotiating over the debt ceiling, saying other presidents — including Obama — had set precedents by engaging in debt ceiling horse trading.

It's unlikely Ryan will back down from this position. One reason he was able to sell the present two-year budget deal to the Republican conference was that he had credibility as a fiscal conservative who has pushed hard for entitlement reform and against tax increase.

Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, is still thought to have ambitions for either the White House or House speakership. For that reason, it's unlikely he would go out of his way to antagonize conservatives.

That places him on a collision course with the White House, where press secretary Jay Carney on Monday yet again repeated that the president doesn't intend to negotiate over the debt ceiling.

"We have not and will not change our position, nor do we expect Republicans to travel down that road again, because one, so many of them have said they won't, including those who endorsed the approach in October, and two, because that approach and pursuit was so disastrous for them and for the economy and for the middle class," Carney said.

"So, you know, I'm not going to anticipate a decision by Republicans to do that again, to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, because we don't believe they — obviously, that they should, and nor do we believe that they will. The president's position has not and will not change."

So there it is: Ryan says there will be no clean debt ceiling bill if Republicans have anything to say about it, and the administration says negotiations over the debt ceiling are a nonstarter. It's a perfect recipe for another default scare early in a midterm election year, sometime in March to be somewhat more precise.

That happens to be right about when the 2014 primary season gets underway. Which means many Republicans will be under maximum grass-roots pressure to vote against a clean debt ceiling.

So if the two-year budget agreement represented a break in the partisan clouds that have long hung over the nation's capital, it is likely to be only the briefest of openings.