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Republican congressional leaders have said they will let all of the Bush tax cuts expire unless the president bows to their demand that the top 3 percent of Americans be included in any tax cut extension.

Obama should call their bluff.

I don't think the Republicans are so stupid that they would let all the Bush tax cuts expire if they cannot continue tax cuts for billionaires and the affluent on all of their income. But let's assume that the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are that dumb, or so beholden to the antitax billionaires funding their campaigns, that they would force universal tax increases.

This is a fight that Obama can win, and win handily, if he has the backbone to stand up for the vast majority and sound tax policies, and to take on the antitax billionaires who are piling up huge gains while unemployment, debt, and fear stalk our land.

A sudden reduction in take-home pay in January would seriously damage our fragile economy, not to mention provoke widespread anger and fear. The economic news would be so awful that a president half as eloquent as Obama could easily focus attention on the Republican all-or-nothing tax policies as the cause of this universal pain.

And like an extra cherry atop a sundae, the Republicans gave Obama a gift when they said they have no interest in renewing his $400 Making Work Pay tax credit. That statement alone lets the president paint Republicans as tax hikers who want to hit people who work, while shielding billionaires.

Moreover, since polls show that hardly anyone knows about this Obama tax cut, which the administration calls the largest middle-class tax cut in history, promoting it would be like getting a second free cherry from the GOP.

Poll after poll shows less than 40 percent of Americans support extending the Bush tax cuts for all, and that support is highly concentrated among Republicans.

Fox News, in yet another poll it commissioned but hardly found worthy of mention, found that registered voters opposed the Republican plan of tax cuts for all. The Fox poll of 1,200 registered voters taken the week before the midterm elections found that 55 percent wanted to repeal all the tax cuts or just those for taxpayers making more than $250,000 annually. Just 39 percent favored keeping all the Bush tax cuts, with the rest unsure.

Among Democrats, 74 percent favored repealing all the tax cuts or just those for top earners. Among independents it was 53 percent. Among Republicans this was the minority position, but it still drew 36 percent.

The president could speak about Wall Street handing out record bonuses this year -- an estimated $144 billion to a relative handful of people, many of whom get richer by destroying wealth, including assets of state and local government pension funds whose losses we have to make up for with more taxes.

Those bonuses, by the way, are about 2.4 times expected Wall Street profits.

How about a presidential lecture on entitlements focused on Lloyd Blankfein, whose firm's bad bets taxpayers paid off at 100 cents on the dollar? The Goldman Sachs boss whines about making only $9 million last year because of his "sacrifice" and plans an extra-big payday this December to make up for last year.

The president could change the terms of our economic debate by talking about how much the vast majority props up many of those at the very top, starting with Blankfein. He could tell people about the trillion dollars a year of tax favors for corporations and the rich, as documented by the Shelf Project. (For the article, see Tax Notes, July 5, 2010, p. 101.)

The question on the table for Obama is this: Will you do the job you asked people to elect you to do?

With a tough, clear message, the president could move our country forward toward the kind of debate we need to have, about how best to tax ourselves in the 21st century, about how to make our country's infrastructure safe, our education first-rate again, and our research laboratories cutting edge.

But will he?

And if the Republicans cave, then what? Then the president will find his approval ratings soaring, because the public loves a winner, the majority wants him to win this one, and he will have saved us from borrowing $700 billion to give to the richest among us, which is not just more than we can afford, it is crazy, stupid, and economically destructive.

When it comes to taxes, will Barack Obama prove himself a profile in courage or a coward who lacks the courage of his convictions?

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