President Barack Obama is using the backdrop of an impending government shutdown to pressure Congress to end a tax break exploited by private-equity managers, venture capitalists and some hedge fund executives.

With two weeks left before a potential shutdown, Obama is outlining for corporate CEOs today a tax increase on income earned by fund managers, called carried interest, a White House official said. Obama wants the revenue to offset a budget increase.

The president has proposed ending what he calls a “loophole” for carried interest for years. His latest push comes as rising income inequality has made hedge fund managers the target of both Democrats and Republicans seeking the 2016 presidential nomination.

Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have embraced raising the tax rate for carried interest. The White House official, who requested anonymity to preview the president’s remarks, described the issue as an area of common ground.

“The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country,” Obama said in May during a forum on poverty. “If we can’t ask from society’s lottery winners to make that modest investment, then really this conversation is for show.”

Republicans in Congress have balked at the president’s plan, calling it a tax hike. In taking his message to CEOs at a Business Roundtable event Wednesday, Obama is highlighting a division between Republicans in Congress and some Republicans running for president on an issue important to Wall Street.

Business Roundtable is a trade group for the leaders of the nation’s largest corporations, including AT&T Inc., Xerox Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp.

Trump, Bush

Trump, who is leading in the Republican polls, has attacked hedge fund executives for paying too little in taxes, saying he would raise levies on their income. Bush released a tax plan last week that proposes ending the provision.

Under Obama’s plan, carried interest would be taxed as ordinary income at rates as high as 43.4 percent, instead of as capital gains at a maximum 23.8 percent rate. The proposal would raise about $17.7 billion over a decade, according to the Treasury Department. Obama has said the revenue could be used to increase spending on education and infrastructure.

Hedge fund managers who make profits from short-term trades already pay the top tax rate for gains on assets held less than a year.

Two unrelated disputes have gridlocked spending legislation that would keep the government operating after Sept. 30, the end of the 2015 fiscal year.

Republicans want to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the women’s health provider whose services include abortion, because of hidden-camera videos released by an anti-abortion group that show some of the organization’s executives discussing compensation for providing tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers. Obama and congressional Democrats stand by the group and say they won’t agree to spending bills that defund it.

Obama wants Congress to lift spending caps known as sequestration that restrict the budget for domestic health, research and education programs. He has threatened to veto every spending bill Republicans have produced so far because they would provide less money for the government than he requested.

House Speaker John Boehner said last week that “‘the goal here is not to shut down the government’’ but to instead end the selling of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood denies that it profits from providing tissue to researchers.