Advocates of extensive tax expenditure reduction argue — correctly — that all deficit reduction choices involve substantive costs and are politically difficult. They then suggest that, when compared to other possibilities, substantially more cuts may be doable than the Congressional research numbers suggest.

Maybe, but I think that’s unlikely when compared to the alternative of restoring the topmost tax brackets to their Clinton-era level.

Raising tax rates for those with the highest incomes challenges the supply-side proposition that even moderately higher rates would hurt growth. President Bill Clinton’s 1993 deficit reduction plan increased income tax rates for roughly the top 1.2 percent of incomes. Opponents said this would lead to recession. Instead, we had enormous job creation and the longest economic expansion in our history.

A recent report by the Hamilton Project, an economic policy project on whose advisory council I serve, reviewed 23 studies of the impact of tax-rate changes on the propensity to work and found that most of them concluded there was no meaningful effect. Tax expenditure reductions, on the other hand, will not raise nearly the revenues needed for sufficient deficit reduction without increasing taxes on the middle class significantly and are likely to disrupt important social and economic goals, though many economists don’t acknowledge that.

When you compare raising the marginal rates for roughly 2 million Americans to phasing out health insurance exclusions that would affect 150 million Americans — even if some reform should be done — I don’t think it’s a close call substantively or politically.

We should let the Bush high-end tax cuts expire, with an achievable, progressive reduction in tax expenditures. And we should have spending cuts, including entitlement reforms, equally matched by revenue increases. The entire program — including budgetary room for public investment and a moderate upfront jobs package — could be enacted now and deferred for a limited time with a serious mechanism to guarantee implementation.

For plans that both reduce deficits and lower rates, some suggest that, instead of raising the top two brackets to Clinton-era levels, we can find the same revenues by limiting tax expenditures for those groups. That would have some meaningful negative policy impacts, unlike increasing the top rate. The bigger problem is that such a step would yield only a fraction of the necessary revenue, requiring higher taxes on the middle class.

The pressure of the fiscal cliff, the fact that doing nothing is not viable, and the distance to the next election all combine to make this a special opportunity to meet our fiscal imperative. We need an open, cleareyed debate so we don’t squander it.