Does Obama Want to Engage in an American Version of Class Warfare?

In 2012 President Barack Obama will fight a war to defend the White House. If he loses, he will have to move out of the White House. According to reports by American media, Obama has more than enough money to cover the costs of the election. In other words, the only thing keeping Obama from winning the 2012 election is not money, but enough popular support.

As Obama nears the end of his four-year term, his support is slipping. Clearly, the number of people dissatisfied with his leadership ability has significantly increased. Obama needs big plans in order to stop the rapid decline in his ratings.

It’s about time for him to roll out his big plans.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett recently wrote an article in the New York Times calling for the American government to stop coddling rich people like him. Obama seized this opportunity to reform the tax system by focusing specifically on rich Americans. He calls the proposal the “Buffett Rule,” and it should generate $1.5 trillion in taxes within the next 10 years.

This $1.5 billion is part of Obama’s 10-year plan to reduce the deficit. Obama is also planning $580 billion in spending cuts, $1.1 trillion reduction in the form of troop withdrawals, and a savings calculated at $430 billion from lower interest payments on debt.

Obama’s plan to increase income and reduce spending mainly focuses on 450,000 rich Americans and major companies. As soon as the plan was unveiled, it was vilified as “class warfare” by American media. The Republican Party strongly opposes using the rich to reduce the deficit and Congress had another war of words on the issue.

Does Obama actually want to engage in an American version of class warfare? Obviously not. After all, 450,000 of the super rich constitute a stratum at best, not a class. Furthermore, the true meaning of class warfare is a life-and-death struggle, and could never be defined as simply increasing some taxes.

Considering the strong response from the Republican Party, Buffett’s call to action was not recognized by most of America’s rich people. Many people felt misrepresented and will probably put pressure on members of Congress. Obama’s grand plans to reduce the deficit will probably be diminished due to strong opposition in Congress. The “Buffett Rule” designed for rich people is facing so much opposition from Republicans and some Democrats that it may fail before it has a chance to get started.

But Obama clearly is not worried about future opposition and boycotts.

According to Obama, this deficit plan should have been proposed at the beginning of his term. But he has waited until the fall of 2011 to propose the idea and allowed 10 years for its completion. Thus, even if Obama is re-elected, he will only be working on the project for about five years. Would the following president continue to implement the deficit plan? It seems that Obama is still keeping something up his sleeve.

Even though the Republican Party totally opposes this plan, Obama’s actions are very helpful for lobbying the support of the American people. Obama has over 10 million Twitter followers today. The common man will definitely support this plan. If Congress blocks the bill, Obama will become a martyr and that will encourage more people to vote for Obama. For this reason, Obama’s big plan is probably just a scheme to save his ratings and is nowhere near class warfare.