GOP criticizes Barack Obama’s idea to tax millionaires

Republican leaders yesterday went after President Barack Obama’s proposal for a new tax on millionaires, calling it “class warfare” and predicting it will face heavy opposition in Congress.

Obama is expected to propose a “Buffett Tax” today on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his recommendations to a congressional super-committee seeking long-term deficit savings.

Paul Ryan, chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, and Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican leader, said the proposal would limit growth and hurt corporate investment in an already stagnating economy.

“It adds further instability to our system [and] more uncertainty, and it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs,” Ryan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Class warfare may make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics.”

McConnell said Congress had already debated the issue last year, when Obama and Republicans forged a compromise that extended the reduced tax rates for high-earners for two years.

“It’s a bad thing to do in the middle of an economic downturn,” McConnell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There is bipartisan opposition to what the president is recommending already.”