taxes

It was precisely at the end of eight years of the most recent Republican presidency that the country was brought down to its knees financially. How can a party take a healthy budget surplus, and in just eight years, convert it into the most disastrous financial meltdown seen in over 70 years—if indeed it were the party of wealth creation? (A blind worship of tax cuts even through a costly preemptive war was one factor.) Wealth and enterprise are synonymous with Indian-Americans. Ditto for Jewish Americans, another very prosperous and enterprising community. If the Republican Party were truly the better choice on these counts, why have these two—the wealthiest demographic groups in America—consistently aligned with the Democratic Party? 

As President Obama and his campaign team know, the Buffett Rule -- officially the Paying a Fair Share Act -- is a powerful symbol of many Americans' desire for economic justice and reprisal against the richest 1 percent that has arguably cached the country's wealth for itself.  So it's only rational that Obama would bring it into focus as the primaries shift to the two-man  race for the presidency. 

The great fear a year ago when President Obama unveiled his budget for 2012 was that he caved to the GOP and Tea Party hardliners, and axed dozens of vital programs and agencies. The screams were long and loud from liberal Democrats that the budget slashes would tar Obama as the first Democratic president to do what no Democrat or GOP president had dared do and that was to slash and restructure Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The fears have mostly proved groundless.