President Obama and the Democrats have embraced a legislative policy that focuses on one of their tried and true political issues, income inequality, which they define as the income gap between higher and lower income earners. They claim the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.
The Republicans, on the other hand, counter that the Democrats are only trying to distract attention away from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and tee up an issue upon which they can run, since the ACA is politically a losing proposition. The Republicans are most likely accurate, but income inequality is a real issue that must be addressed, although neither party has proposed a viable solution to fix it.