Warren Buffett, who has a featured role in the policy case for the White House’s new deficit reduction plan, will also be helping boost President Barack Obama’s re-election coffers next month at a Chicago-area fundraiser, the campaign confirmed Wednesday.
Buffett, an investor known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” has long been an Obama supporter and financial backer. Obama presented Buffett with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February.
The fundraiser, at a private residence on the North Shore, is scheduled for Oct. 27. Buffett is also scheduled to appear at an event Sept. 30 in New York. Neither will feature the president.
The “Buffett Rule” was the centerpiece of Obama’s deficit reduction plan announced Monday. It’s not a specific legislative proposal, but rather a principle Obama wants lawmakers to observe as they consider tax reform: that no one earning more than $1 million a year should be taxed at a lower rate than middle-income households.
It’s based on Buffett’s contention, outlined in a New York Times opinion piece in August, that he should not have a lower tax burden than his lower-salaried staff. That piece drew criticism from some Republicans, who observed that Buffett is free to write a check to the federal Treasury any time he wishes to make up for that disparity.
Buffett was a prominent supporter of Obama in his presidential race, joining him at a 2007 fundraiser in Omaha, Neb., at which he declared: “Barack is here to increase the abundance, but to spread it around a little more so that it is inclusive prosperity.”
In 2005, when then-Sen. Obama visited Omaha, Buffett told the Tribune: “I’ve got a conviction about him that I don’t get very often. He has as much potential as anyone I’ve seen to have an important impact over his lifetime on the course that America takes.”
