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Billionaire Warren Buffett urged U.S. lawmakers to raise taxes on the country's super-rich to help cut the budget deficit, saying such a move will not hurt investments.

The 80-year-old accused Congress of being 'billionaire friendly' and claimed in an opinion article for the New York Times that they spared him and his rich friends when talking about a 'shared sacrifice'.

He said: “Our leaders have asked for ‘shared sacrifice’. But when they did the asking, they spared me.”

“I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.”

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

Buffett, one of the world's richest men and chairman of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc, said his federal tax bill last year was $6,938,744.

“That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 per cent of my taxable income - and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office.”

“Their tax burdens ranged from 33 per cent to 41 per cent and averaged 36 per cent,” he said.

Lawmakers engaged in a partisan battle over spending and taxes for more than three months before agreeing on August 2 to raise the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling, avoiding a U.S. default.

Mr Buffett said: 'Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country's fiscal problems.

'Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness.'

He said higher taxes for the rich will not discourage investment and cited the example of the eighties when rates were much higher.

'Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack.

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)