By rebuffing the Buffett rule, while continuing to demand cuts in Medicare, Social Security, education and job-creation efforts, Republicans have revealed their true colors, representing the values of few and the interests of even fewer.

Republicans would rather cut Medicare benefits than make millionaires pay their fair share of taxes.

Republicans would rather gut education than make billionaires pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as the middle class does.

According to the IRS, 1,500 people who made more than $1 million in income paid zero taxes in 2009 – not a cent. Republicans put a higher priority on ensuring that those individuals continue paying no taxes than on helping millions of unemployed get jobs.

The 400 richest Americans, all of whom made more than $110 million in 2008, paid only 18 percent of their income in taxes. A family making $69,000 per year pays 25 percent – and Republicans say they would prefer that the Forbes 400 go on paying less than the middle class.

Check the word “untenable” in the dictionary and you’ll find the GOP’s opposition to the Buffett rule – the notion articulated by President Obama that no household making more than $1 million a year should pay a smaller share of its income in taxes than middle-class families pay. As the president said Monday, “It is wrong that