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Buffett said Monday in a New York Times opinion piece that he would immediately raise rates on households with taxable income of more than $1 million, and he would add an additional increase for those making $10 million or more.
He also recommends that the 12 members of Congress charged with devising a deficit-cutting plan leave rates for 99.7 percent of U.S. taxpayers unchanged.
“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress,” Buffett wrote. “It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
President Barack Obama carried a similar tax message as he began a three-day bus tour through the Midwest. Hitting back against an emboldened GOP, President Barack Obama launched a rare direct attack Monday on the Republican presidential field, criticizing his potential 2012 rivals for their blanket opposition to any deficit-cutting compromise involving new taxes.
“That’s just not common sense,” Obama told the crowd at a town hall-style meeting in Cannon Falls, Minn., as he kicked off a three-day bus tour through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.
“You’ve got to be willing to compromise to move the country forward,” the president said later in the day as he delivered the same message at a town hall in Decorah, Iowa.
At the same time Obama was forced to defend his own record as Iowa voters asked him about all the compromises he’s made with the GOP.
“I make no apologies for being reasonable,” Obama declared as he stood in front of a cheery-red barn, surrounded by bales of hay.
The president recalled a moment in last week’s GOP presidential debate when all eight of the candidates said they would refuse to support a deal with tax increases, even if tax revenues were outweighed 10-to-1 by spending cuts.
Obama didn’t mention any of the candidates by name, and prefaced the remark by saying, “I know it’s not election season yet.”
But his comment underscored that election season is indeed under way. The bus tour, although an official White House event rather than a campaign swing, is taking Obama through three states he won in 2008 but where he now needs to shore up his standing. It’s giving him a chance to return to the grassroots campaigning that helped propel him to the White House, and shed his jacket and tie to mix it up with voters in coffee shops and lunch joints far from the Beltway – as he did in three unscheduled stops Monday.
Buffett, who is chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, has been calling for higher taxes on the super wealthy for several years. He has said the tax system has contributed to the growing gap between rich and poor.
In his Monday opinion piece, Buffett noted that the mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most investment income but practically nothing in payroll taxes. The middle class, meanwhile, typically falls into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets and is hit with heavy payroll taxes. He said Washington legislators “feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species.”
Buffett said he knows many of the mega-rich well, and most wouldn’t mind paying more in taxes, especially when so many fellow citizens are suffering. He also said he has yet to see anyone shy away from investments because of tax rates on potential gains, even when rates were much higher in the mid-1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
“People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off,” he said.
