The Buffett Tax Defeated in the Senate -or- How They Learned Not To Love Eleven Hours of Tax Revenue

"Buffett Tax Baloney - So the Buffett tax ruse is finally dead.

The millionaire tax—named for financier Warren Buffett and designed to ensure that high earners pay at least 30% in federal income tax—failed to get the 60 Senate votes necessary and went down 51 to 45.

The Senate's class warfare champion, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, even acknowledged that this is not about growth or deficit reduction or raising tax revenues. Rather, it's about "tax fairness." Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney noted that the plan "would pay for government for less than 11 hours. This isn't a grand idea." But President Obama thinks it is. Mr. Obama wasted no time blasting Republicans for "spending money" on tax cuts for the "wealthy that they don't need."

Only one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, supported the tax. Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas voted no. Democrats thought that this issue was solid political gold, and polling seemed to show that two of three Americans supported the tax hike on "millionaires and billionaires." But what this exercise has accomplished for the Democrats is an open question. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York promised after the vote to bring the issue up again and again. The party now appears to be more obsessed with socking it to the rich than with creating jobs, growing the economy, or solving the middle-class squeeze." - Stephen Moore, The Wall Street Journal, Political Diary, 04/17/2012