So the U.S. Senate and House are looking at unemployment compensation and dropping tax cuts for the wealthy. Senate Republican leadership kept the Senate from dropping those tax cuts (which were given to the wealthy in the Bush era). Such taxes cuts, for personal taxes - especially for the most wealthy - need to be dropped to maintain needed programs like unemployment benefits and to help reduce the deficit.

While Congress is having this conversation, Wall Street is figuring out how to do an end-around such cuts, like giving bonuses early. If Congress does drop the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest income levels, a worker who earns a $1 million bonus would pay $40,000 to $50,000 more in taxes next year than this year. Oh my, I am concerned about that. Making a million and then having to pay .0005 of that in taxes. Oh my .(report Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson)

We should be demonstrating our deomcratic gifts in a big, big way right now - in this economy, when so many are out of any kind of job - when somebody makes $1 million in a bonus – a bonus, for goodness sake - one should pay taxes on that bonus. This is not corporate taxes we're talking about these are individuals' dollars.

The Senate Republican leadership said Sunday that they expect to get an extension of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts in exchange for extending unemployment compensation. What about dropping the tax cuts AND extending unemployment.

Ending the tax cuts for those making more than $1 million in bonuses AND extending unemployment - that's the right thing to do. Whose side are they on? Perhaps too many in the Senate are themselves millionaires and forget what America is really like out here. Ending the tax cuts for the wealthy AND extending unemployment - that's the right thing to do. Here's where deomcratic capitalism really needs it's democratic aspect to weigh in. We need to tell them what to do.

But they won't do it unless we all call for it. So call you members of the Senate and of the House...today. Message: extend unemployment compensation but not tax cuts for the wealthy!