Posted by
Defend America on Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:12:41 PM
Obama ‘Agnostic’ on Deficit Cuts, Won’t Prejudge Tax Increases
By Rich Miller
Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said
he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than
$250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.
Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that
a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options
for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending
on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
“The whole point of it is to make sure that all
ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So
what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”
Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential
election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making
less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year.
When senior White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers and
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suggested in August that the
administration might be open to going back on that pledge, White House
press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly reiterated the president’s promise.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-11/obama-agnostic-on-deficit-cuts-won-t-prejudge-tax-increases.html