TPM's Brian Beutler Christina Bellantoni reports a top Democratic aide says Senate Democrats are moving towards a debate and vote on President Obama's middle-class tax cut plan as early as next week.

"We're having this fight before November," the aide told TPM, speaking on a condition of anonymity to be able to lay out the political agenda. "The caucus is in agreement that this fight is a fight worth taking before the election. You may not win but you put yourself in the camp of fighting with the middle class." The idea is to vote on the middle class cuts, then box Republicans into calling for cuts for the rich. "Those Republicans will have to stand up and say, 'Don't forget the high earners.' They will have to call for an amendment."

According to the aide, Majority Leader Reid plans to introduce legislation that would permanently extend Obama's middle-class tax cuts but allow Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. The filibuster would allow Republicans to hold the tax cuts hostage, but by moving forward with the legislation Reid would force them to actually vote it down instead of merely threaten to block it, increasingly the political peril for Republicans in an election year.

If Republicans don't filibuster the measure, they'd have an opportunity to amend it with a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, but such an amendment would require 19 votes from Democratic senators, a nearly impossible challenge. At that point, GOPers could again decide to filibuster the legislation, but they would again face the political risk of holding middle-class tax cuts hostage just before an election.