Obama enlists millionaires in Buffett rule campaign

President Barack Obama is intensifying his campaign for higher taxes on top U.S. earners by casting the issue against Republican opposition as one of fairness and support for the middle class.

Obama enlisted what the administration described as a group of four millionaires and their assistants, all of whom support the so-called Buffett rule to set a minimum tax on people who earn at least $1 million annually.

The president met with Abigail Disney, president of the Daphne Foundation, Whitney Tilson, managing director of T2 Partners LLC, Frank Jernigan, a retired software engineer from Google Inc and Lawrence Benenson, partner at Benenson Capital Co, according to an administration official. They were accompanied by their assistants at the event.

 

Obama said the millionaires on the stage with him at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building are “rightly proud of their success.” They had agreed to take part in the event because “they haven’t been asked to do their fair share” and feel there is something “deeply wrong and irresponsible about that.”

The proposal, which faces Republican opposition in a test vote in the Senate on April 16, is named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who says he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, largely because of the preferential treatment given to capital gains and dividends.

“They agree with Warren,” Obama said of the group. “This should be fixed.”

The administration didn’t release details about the tax rates paid by the four millionaires or their assistants.

Disney is the granddaughter of Roy O Disney, co-founder of the Walt Disney Co. She and Tilson are Obama donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign finance. Disney and Tilson each have given Obama at least $5,000 over the past year, according to the center’s data.

Obama spent yesterday in Florida, a swing state central to his re-election strategy, talking about the Buffett rule and portraying Republicans as poised to undo a health-care law and other measures he said have helped students, senior citizens and the middle class.

Speaking in Hollywood, Florida, at one of three fundraising events yesterday, Obama said the U.S. should be a place where “everybody has a chance to get ahead, not just those at the very top.”