But more fundamentally, it cuts against everything our country and my party stand for. Government’s role should not be to rig the game in favor of “the haves” but to make sure “the have-nots” are given a fair shot.

President Obama, who has rightly made income inequality a signature issue, cannot be pleased that the über-rich have gained under the policies pursued by his administration, while the bottom 99 percent have not. Unfortunately, his economic team, populated by acolytes of the former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, has relied on the same “growth” policies that got us into trouble precrisis: generous treatment of the financial sector and easy money from the Federal Reserve. These strategies have done little to encourage sustainable economic growth, but they have worked wonders to increase Wall Street profits and inflate the value of stocks and bonds — which are disproportionately owned by the rich.

Why haven’t Republicans made an issue out of this? No doubt some fear that discussing it openly would catalyze support for redistributionist policies, which are anathema to a party that prides itself on increasing the pie, not redividing it. But there are other policy options to demonstrate Republicans’ commitment to the average Joe and Jane that are very much in the party’s tradition.

For instance, as part of renewed fiscal discussions over sequestration, Republicans should put fundamental tax reform on the table and make it our priority to end preferential treatment of investment income, which lets managers of hedge funds pay half the tax rate of managers of shoe stores.

Defenders of this giveaway make the unsubstantiated claim that it encourages job-creating investments. But what we have now is merely an immense pool of investment funds that has created far too few jobs. A report last year by Bain and Co. projected that by 2020 there will be $900 trillion in financial assets around the globe, chasing investments in a real economy worth only $90 trillion in gross domestic product. Why in heaven’s name do we need to keep a tax preference to encourage more?