WASHINGTON, D.C.--U.S. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, today praised the Senate's defeat of President Barack Obama's Buffett tax increase, by a vote of 51-45.

"Despite the president's endless political rhetoric and class warfare in recent months, the Senate today rejected the president's Buffett tax, which is merely a political distraction that won't create jobs, lower gas prices, or reduce the national debt," said Thune. "The president continues to propose higher taxes on the American public so that he can spend more on big government projects like Solyndra and ObamaCare. Instead, Washington should be working to enact policies that lessen existing regulatory burdens on our job creators, increase domestic energy production, and rein in runaway federal spending."

Four out of five people who would have been subject to the president's Buffett tax were business owners who are already struggling to maintain their current payrolls. Nearly 13 million Americans are currently without a job, and the national unemployment rate has been above eight percent for more than 37 months. The Buffett tax was yet another failed idea offered by the president that would have made things even worse.

In September of 2011, President Obama stated that the Buffett tax would, "stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade" and went on to say "this is not politics; this is math." Yet, the Buffett tax was recently scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation as raising $47 billion over 10 years. This destructive tax hike would raise less than $5 billion per year, which only equals about half of what the federal government spends in one day. The total amount raised by the Buffett tax would cover less than one percent of the total new debt the president has proposed for the next decade.

###