Wednesday, February 10, 2010

News

From Bloomberg News:
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.”...

“What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table,” Obama said. “Some would say we can’t look at entitlements. There are going to be some that say we can’t look at taxes, and pretty soon, you just can’t solve the problem.”...
Read the full article

I suppose we'll have to wait till the full interview is published on Friday to see the exact quote in its proper context. Obama is quite adept in the art of ambiguity, and its quite possible that he did not openly state his intention to raise taxes on the middle class, but merely alluded to the idea.

Was he sending out another one of his trial balloons? Does he really he think a proposed tax hike on the middle class will fly with the American people?

P.S. I just read the entire interview. Obama was clearly responding to a question as to whether he would ultimately raise taxes on households making less than $250,000:

Other news:

Obama budget rigs healthcare numbers - h/t -Instapundit

AP: Jobs bill will hand Obama a badly needed political victory, but will not create many jobs

Pelosi aid says Democratic congressional leaders have settled on a legislative "trick" to pass Obamacare; so why have a summit?

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