The nation’s growing income inequality recently has generated considerable attention—and has sparked a backlash by billionaires. TED’s Chris Anderson showed what a hot button issue it is when he tried to repress a video talk on the subject by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Hanauer, like billionaire investor Warren Buffett, supports increasing taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals for the good of the nation. Buffett and other billionaires have joined forces in a new pro-tax-increase-for-the-rich organization to assert: “ We are the 1 percent, we stand with the 99 percent .”

Now the issue has hit the presidential campaign trail.

It pays to have friends in high places, especially at tax time. It paid well today for the wealthy when their close Republican U.S. Senate friends blocked action on the “ Buffett Rule .” The simple piece of tax legislation would require millionaires and billionaires to pay at the same tax rate most of us do.

The bill, known as the “Paying a Fair Share Act” (S.2230) failed (51-45) to get the 60 votes needed for passage. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas were the only politicians to cross party lines.

Billionaire Warren Buffett is a thorn in the side of Republicans. This pillar of the capitalist community and CEO of the corporate conglomerate Berkshire Hathway, continues to press Congress to raise taxes wealthy people like him. When congressional Republicans answered him by proposing a voluntary check-off box on tax-filing forms for people who want to pay more taxes, Buffet threw down a gauntlet. He’d happily match the voluntary tax contributions made by GOP lawmakers, he said—and he’d even triple-match those made by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

As the congressional Super Committee struggles to meet next week’s deadline for a plan to find $1.2 trillion in budget savings over the course of the next decade, some millionaires are targeting Capitol Hill with an unlikely message: Tax us more.

It’s really a shame Republicans in Congress don’t want to raise taxes on the super wealthy to help fund needed repairs to our nation’s bridges and roads—which in turn would create badly needed jobs for some of the nation’s 26 million unemployed and underemployed or those who have stopped looking for work.

Income inequality has become so severe in this nation that people in Really Important Positions (except for most Republicans in Congress) are starting to take note—and issue warnings.

This is a crosspost by Pat Garofalo at Think Progress .

When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” “Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” he said.

Republicans in Congress are fighting to give more tax breaks to the extremely wealthy, rather than create jobs. Here at a glance is ample reason why the rich don’t need any more breaks—they already pay a lower percentage of their income than do the rest of us.  Warren Buffett is right.

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, has said repeatedly U.S. taxes should be higher on him and his fellow billionaires and millionaires. Today he lays it on the line  in a New York Times op-ed piece.