Emphasis added. Three reasons:
1. While most brackets would remain at Bush Cuts levels, the upper brackets are where the cream is.
2. Middle class wages have gone into the shitter. And taxing them more would further reduce consumption, which is struggling already.
3. Political expediency, obviously. It's an inexorable part of our form of republican democracy.
It still doesnt eliminate the fact that just taxing the upper brackets at the clinton era level will not do jack squat. Any meaningful increase would have to reach confiscation levels if you just tax the top 2-3% of people, and even then, after one year, all that money is gone.
For people who keep calling themselves memebers of the reality based community, progressives seem to be really bad at basic math, or worse, deliberately ignorant of reality.
For you guys 2+2 = 5,000,000 and a balanced budget.