Main Entry: 1ag·nos·tic
Pronunciation: \ag-?näs-tik, ?g-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek agn?stos unknown, unknowable, from a- + gn?stos known, from gign?skein to know — more at know
Date: 1869
1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something (political agnostics)
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Obama's "firm pledge" to the American people before being elected:
"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes...you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
--Barack Obama
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Obama today:
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 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.
In the interview, Obama said that putting preconditions on the agenda of a bipartisan advisory commission, which he said he would soon establish, would just undermine its purpose.
“What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table,” Obama said.
Obama said the U.S. was faced with a “structural deficit” that was in place before the recession began. “Our real problem is not the spike in spending last year, or the lost, even the lost revenues last year, as significant as those are,” he said. “The real problem has to do with the fact that there is a just a mismatch between the amount of money coming in and the amount of money going out."
Analysts say that middle-class taxes will need to be increased because the government can’t raise enough money from the wealthy alone to close the budget gap.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-11/obama-agnostic-on-deficit-cuts-won-t-prejudge-tax-increases.html
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I guess the word "faced" above = inherited
and
"Agnostic" is like voting "present."
