U.S. Congressman Eliot Engel, who represents portions of the north Bronx, is praising President Barack Obama’s plan to raise the base tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to raise revenue and reduce the country’s budget deficit.

Obama’s proposal, announced Monday as part of a larger plan for economic growth, would increase taxes for people making over $1 million a year. The president is calling it the “Buffet Rule,” after the billionaire investor who famously lamented in a New York Times Op-Ed last month that he pays a smaller portion of his income in taxes than the poor or middle class.

In a statement Tuesday, Engel said he agreed with Obama’s decision to raise the income threshold for the tax hike from $250,000, the previously proposed bracket.

“Having the threshold at $1 million will not penalize high cost-of-living states, and will still generate the kind of revenues we need to address our long-term debt,” he said.

Even with that change, the president’s plan is already getting resistance from the Republicans of Congress, who claim that forcing the extremely wealthy to pay more will deter them from creating jobs and ultimately stall the economy—an idea that Engel dismissed.

“My Republican friends deride this as ‘class warfare’ because it asks the wealthy to pay more,” he said. “Class warfare to me is refusing to tighten tax loopholes and continuing the Bush Tax Cut levels, while the middle and working class continue to struggle.  It is class warfare to have the highest rate of poverty in our history while one percent of the country controls half the wealth.”