Axelrod also expressed president's discomfort with the deal, calling it 'odious' in one interview. Axelrod sells a brighter future

David Axelrod took to the television talk shows Sunday to assuage House Democrats and other liberals infuriated by a deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, saying Democrats might score a more palatable deal in 2012.

"The economy will be stronger,” the senior presidential adviser told Christiane Amanpour on ABC's "This Week," one of three shows on which he appeared Sunday morning. “We'll have gone through a big debate on — on how we have to — what we have to cut and give up. I don't think people are going to make that trade-off in 2012."


And he told CBS’s Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” that President Barack Obama is "very confident about the politics" of the negotiations. "But right now, if we don't take care of business, the politics [will] become more complicated later," he added.

Even as Axelrod hinted that Democrats might be more pleased with the tax deal that Obama will be able to negotiate in 2012, he stood firm on the current package. He said the tax deal won’t change significantly before it’s voted on.

"We have a framework; we have an agreement, and I don't anticipate that it's going to change greatly," he told Schieffer.

As Axelrod was hammering home the need for the deal on three different shows, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), acknowledged that Democrats won’t stop the vote from happening “at the end of the day." That’s a good sign for the package, since House Republicans are likely to vote for it and Senate Democrats have indicated support.

In his defense of Obama’s support for the package, Axelrod pointed out that the compromise doesn’t mean a victory for Republicans.

“They did not want the child tax credit,” he said. “They did not want the college tax credit. They didn't want to extend the full earned income tax credit that helped people down the income scale. They wanted high-income tax cuts and they wanted to expand the estate tax exemptions. And so we had to make a compromise to get to where we are.”

House Democrats slammed Obama for being unfair to the middle class at the expense of the rich; among those speaking out Sunday were New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler, Maryland's Elijah Cummings and Washington state's Jim McDermott. But Axelrod insisted that the president isn’t abandoning party values in backing the bill.

“The president is who the president always has been,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.” “He’s someone who’s trying to solve problems for the American people. He’s someone who’s trying to improve the lives of the middle class.”

He pointed out Obama’s early support for a tax provision that Republicans have championed, which allows businesses to defer their taxes on new equipment, to show that the president has supported Republican ideas in the past as well.

Axelrod also made a point of expressing Obama’s discomfort with the deal, at one point calling it “odious.”

But he said again and again that the compromise is necessary because the White House is running out of time to extend the tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of the year.

"No one wants to see two million people lose their unemployment insurance, and everybody understands what it would mean for the economy if we don't get this done," he said on CNN.