Obama’s Tax Pitch: The Income Gap That Millionaires Should Fill

President Barack Obama has shifted his central argument against the Bush-era tax cuts to make the income gap as much a voter concern as the budget gap.

Since Sept. 3, Obama has chided Republicans for wanting to extend tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires” -- a line he repeated in a morning television interview, a weekly radio address, backyard chats in Des Moines and Albuquerque, and three times during one speech at a community college in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Before then, administration economists cast taxing the wealthy largely as a matter of fiscal prudence -- a way to free up $700 billion from the deficit over the next 10 years.