Henderson on taxes

Had the Republicans held out for anything like the reforms that Sumner and Landsburg wanted, the bill would have been Dead on Arrival in Harry Reid's Senate. You don't even need to bring Obama into the picture. End of story. So then taxes would have gone up dramatically for people at every income level. So what could Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell do?
What they could do is try to raise as high as possible the threshold beyond which marginal tax rates rose. Boehner first tried that with a $1 million annual income threshold before Christmas but couldn't pass that through the House with just Republican votes. If Republicans regret that, they probably shouldn't. Harry Reid would have killed that bill also. But, with the New Year's eve agreement between Vice-President Biden and Mitch McConnell, those large increases in tax rates apply only to singles with income of over $400K and married couples with income over $450,000. That's bad, but look at what the Republicans got in return.  Henderson talking about the latest tax hike

Not quite but close. Behind the scenes was the California lobby trying to protect the taxable wage levels they recently voted for. This was a Big State insurrection on taxes, mainly California. Now, the small and median states are untaxed at in these wage slots, meaning they will angle for more deficit spending while California wants less; a switharoo if ever there was one.