I listened and watched Obama's Saturday AM video, and I think I saw the way in which "compromise" is going to be framed. Read this:
I recognize that both parties are going to have to work together and compromise to get something done here. But I want to make my priorities clear from the start. One: middle class families need permanent tax relief. And two: I believe we can’t afford to borrow and spend another $700 billion on permanent tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
Then come below for my brief thoughts.
In that larger quote above, we have this ....
we can’t afford to borrow and spend another $700 billion on permanent tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires
Now we all know that the current top bracket is for families with AGI of > 250K. 250K does NOT equal "millionaire" - at least in terms of annual income. But what if you doubled the 250K to 500K? Hard to argue that those folks aren't or won't shortly be "millionaires," but just in case that is too complex a concept ....
So, I went to the IRS website and looked up the annual taxes paid by those with incomes above 200K and discovered - not surprisingly, that those making 200K to 500K paid only 4 Billion in taxes at the 35% marginal rate, but those making OVER 500K paid 236 Billion at the 35% marginal rate, and those making over 1 Million per year paid about 200 of that 236 Billion. (BTW, this is 2007 data - the most recent I found where I was looking.
So, following Sutton's law, I can see Obama saying:
Hey guys: Be a millionaire ... go for it. We will treat you just like "middle class" - but once you hit the million dollar jackpot - the rest of us need an extra 4 cents on the dollar.
At that point, the Rs are truly left arguing the protection of MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES, and the cost in dollars is only about 20% of the money the treasury would have collected had the 200/250 threshold been left alone.
It is a "compromise" that from one perspective "costs" 40 billion or so, but from another perspective, collects an additional 200 billion in needed taxes, and the Rs are left protecting nobody but "the millionaires and billionaires."