At the same time, former Vice President Dick Cheney was meeting with Senate and House Republicans, in part to warn them of the dire consequences he sees in $500 billion in automatic military cuts that will begin to hit on Jan. 2. Off Capitol Hill, a broad bipartisan coalition of fiscal hawks, led by the co-chairman of President Obama’s 2010 fiscal commission, Erskine B. Bowles, restarted efforts to pressure Washington to reach a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction.

But taxes remain a chasm in the Capitol as Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, moved to force votes in the coming days on Democratic tax proposals.

“If you want to join Democrats to protect the middle class and avoid this fiscal cliff that we hear so much about, all you have to do is say yes,” Mr. Reid said to Republicans. “Surely you can at least agree that 98 percent of the families in this country shouldn’t see their taxes go up.”

Numerically, Republicans and Democrats are not as far apart as the exchanges would suggest. President Obama has proposed allowing tax cuts to lapse on incomes over $250,000, raising the top two income tax brackets, allowing capital gains tax rates for affluent families to rise slightly and letting dividend income be taxed as ordinary income, as it was before 2003. Of the $5 trillion in tax increases that will ensue over 10 years if nothing is done, Mr. Obama’s plan would stave off all but $849 billion.

That tax increase on the rich would amount to 0.38 percent of the economy, considerably smaller than the tax increase secured by President Bill Clinton in 1993, which equaled 0.63 percent of the economy, according to White House calculations.

Next week, Senate Democrats will push tax legislation that makes a significant concession to Republicans. It would secure Mr. Obama’s tax increases on the rich, but it would tax dividends and capital gains at a 20 percent rate for households that earn more than $250,000. The White House this year proposed allowing dividends to be taxed again at ordinary income rates, a plan that would increase tax rates on dividends to as high as 44.7 percent, from 15 percent, according to a new report by the accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Neither party was interested Tuesday in emphasizing what their proposals had in common. Republicans highlighted Ernst & Young’s conclusion that tax increases on the affluent would cost around 710,000 jobs, cut wages and “have significant adverse economic effects in the long run.” Democrats pointed to the line in the report that Republicans tended to drop, which said the adverse economic impacts would hit “when the resulting revenue is used to finance additional government spending.” The tax increases Democrats want would instead be part of a deficit reduction package.