While Republicans resist any attempt to address growing income inequality, more and more of America’s wealthy are asking to pay their fair share. Joining billionaire Warren Buffet, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently issued his support for “millionaires and billionaires” paying more in taxes.

Now, Gates is taking it a step further and traveling to the G-20 meeting in Cannes, France today to champion the “Robin Hood tax” — a small financial transaction tax on each stock and bond trade — in order to help financially strapped developed nations meet their global aid pledges to the poor. Aware that countries like the U.S. are not currently receptive to this or any taxes, Gates told the Guardian that hopes his “credibility” lends credence to the idea that such taxes work:

Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the summit, Gates said: “It is very plausible that certain kinds of FTTs could work. I am lending some credibility to that. This money could be well spent and make a difference. An FTT is more possible now than it was a year ago, but it won’t be at rates that magically raise gigantic sums of money.” [...]

[His] report identifies an FTT as one of three ways of raising money. Gates will tell the G20 that it could garner almost $11bn for health aid projects if all members levied tobacco excise taxes of at least 70% of the pack price and earmarked a slice of the revenue for development. Small taxes on shipping and aviation fuel could raise $37bn and $27bn respectively, the report says.

Gates is not alone in his effort. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) introduced legislation that proposes a 0.03 percent tax on financial transactions that could raise $150 billion to “invest in our future, our infrastructure and our middle class.” As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, the tax — which has been embraced by the Occupy Wall Street protests, the governments of France and Germany, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury — could raise serious revenue while slowing down some of the high frequency trading that “mega-banks like Goldman Sachs employ to churn up quick profits.”

DeFazio told ThinkProgress that while Gates’ stated purpose for the tax may be different, he welcomes Gates’ support for an idea already proven to work. He noted that the United Kingdom already imposes a 0.25 percent transaction tax on the sale or purchase of stocks which, as Center For Economic Policy and Research notes, “has very little impact on people who buy stock with the intent of holding it for a long period of time” but will deter those who high frequency trades that exacerbate or lead to market crashes. The policy helps return Wall Street to its days as a place “where people with good ideas go to raise capital” for production rather than a place for “gambling” schemes, said DeFazio.

Echoing the demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is proposing to tax the trading of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. DeFazio, along with his Senate co-sponsor Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), has proposed the tax several times in the past. But this time around, the idea is getting a boost of momentum from the popularity of a similar measure in Europe, as well as renewed national media focus on Wall Street profiteering as a result of the 99 Percent Movement:

Declaring Wall Street a “gambling casino,” DeFazio said the new tax would “both raise needed revenue for the Treasury and rein in speculation on Wall Street.”

Already, the business community is mounting a counteroffensive. With the congressional supercommittee looking to trim at least $1.2 trillion in projected debt over 10 years, the tax could look tantalizing, despite public opposition from many Republicans and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. [...]

The tax could help shrink the deficit — its previous iteration was estimated to add $150 billion a year to federal coffers — and spare Social Security, Medicare and other programs from jarring cuts.

Even representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce admit that this proposal is going to receive serious consideration this session, as congressional Democrats look to trim the deficit in a way that doesn’t overburden the middle and lower classes that are already stretched to the breaking point. “In reality, a proposal like this is going to be on the table in some regard,” said Tom Quaadman, executive director for financial reporting policy and investor opportunity at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

France and Germany have embraced taxing financial trades, and proponents say it’s only a matter of time before the common-sense solution is finally adopted in the U.S. While American bankers are predicting dire consequences if the tax goes into effect, Dean Baker, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says that’s nonsense. “The reality is all you’re doing is raising transaction costs back to where they were 15 or 20 years ago,” he says, noting that the tax has not prevented countries like the United Kingdom from developing vibrant economies.

Top economists and analysts like Reuters’ Felix Salmon have long advocated for a transaction tax as an important moderating influence on Wall Street excess. As Pat Garofolo has explained, “It will help temper trading for trading’s sake and excessive speculation, particularly in the form of high-frequency trading, which only major Wall Street players have the infrastructure to engage in and which will become far more expensive.”

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York City.

While at the Occupy Wall Street protests, ThinkProgress spoke to Ken Zinn, a staffer with the National Nurses Union — the nation’s largest nurses union, with nearly 160,000 members. Zinn’s group is pushing for a financial transactions tax (FTT), which would enact a small tax on financial trading that could generate hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

Zinn says his group was motivated to join the protests and demand the tax because their patients all over the country are hurting, and it’s “time that Wall Street gave back to this country”:

ZINN: We’ve been calling for a tax on Wall Street for several months now because our nurses are seeing on the job, each and every day in hospitals across the country patients who are suffering, patients who are in great need because they’re without a job and having to make a decision whether or not to buy food or pay for medicine, buy food or pay their rent. [...] We’re here because it’s time that Wall Street gave back to this country. And it’s a small tax that we’re proposing on the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and derivatives that would bring in, by our estimation, $350 billion every year into the economy.

Watch ThinkProgress’s interview with Zinn:

While the United States continues to watch the profits of bailed out banks soar, the European Union is expected to move forward on a push for a global financial transactions tax.