Stu Bykofsky: Make it a for-real tax on 'millionaires'

If you're serving "class warfare," cut me a slice of that.

"That" being President Obama's proposed "Buffett Rule," requiring people earning $1 million or more to pay at least the same percentage as middle-income taxpayers. The Buffett of the Rule is uber-investor Warren. (The Jimmy Buffet Rule increases taxes on margaritas.)

Maybe Obama is pumping Buffett because they're cousins.

[Editor's note: That is a fact. Seventh cousins, three times removed, per Ancestry.com.]

It's also called a millionaires' tax, which is more accurate, because Buffett is a billionaire who's been griping that he pays less in taxes (17.4 percent) than his secretary (33 percent). Some right-wingers say that because he pays capital-gains tax and she pays income tax, it's apples and oranges. The way I see it, since each tax is on income, it's closer to tangerines and oranges.

I'm backing Barack because this was my idea, but I'm getting ahead of myself and irritating 24.7 percent of you.

[Editor's note: The above percentage is manufactured.]

Last year, Obama wanted to raise taxes on families earning $250,000 and up. A tactical blunder, it crashed like a goose with a hernia.

Back in April, I told the president he went wrong by painting "families earning more than a quarter-mill as rich. Depending on personal circumstances, they may be comfortable, they may be well-off. But if it's a two-income family, in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, with two kids in college and a labradoodle, they are not 'rich.' "

What you should do, I wrote, is "start the tax bite at $1 million. Proclaim it a 'tax increase on millionaires - only.' "

He didn't take my words, but he took my idea.

In Obama's previous attempt to scale the Mount Everest of debt, Republicans argued that ending Bush-era tax breaks was an attack on the middle class. It wasn't. Only 1.5 percent of American households make $250,000 and up, according to the Census Bureau, but that was the GOP's story; it stuck to it and prevailed.

Now, by starting the tax-break rollback at $1 million, Obama can honestly call it a "tax on millionaires." The GOP won't be able to hide behind the middle-class rhetoric and will have to reject a "tax on millionaires."

How will that play in Peoria?

Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are calling it "class warfare" and an "attack on the job creators."

If millionaires are the job creators - where are the damn jobs?

Except for '88-'92, today's top federal income-tax rate is the lowest in 80 years. Returning the top rate to the Clinton era's 39.6 percent (when the economy thrived) from today's 35 percent won't force the rich to drink Frank's black cherry Wishniak and eat scrapple. It will still be champagne and caviar.

America's economy is (choose one): a) in a ditch; b) half in a ditch; c) heading for a ditch. Obama is asking patriotic Americans (yoo-hoo, tea party and Republicans) to provide a tow truck. Not give until it hurts, but give until it feels good, like Jerry Lewis used to say on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon before they dumped him. (I expect a lawsuit based on age discrimination or a denial of his Brylcreem rights).

Pundits say Obama's plan has little chance of getting through a Republican House, but it can if the 98 percent of us who aren't rich bring the heat.

This will be the political narrative: Obama wants to help rescue America through a piddling tax increase on millionaires, as Republicans defend Gordon Gecko.

Cut me a slice of that.