Just say the following, which everyone can understand and makes a key point that most people are missing:
"Under my plan, everyone, including millionaires, gets a tax cut on their first $250,000 in income. But that's where it stops - we just can't afford to give rich people a huge tax cut giveaway that people making under $250,000 don't get."
Many people don't understand that even billionaires get a tax cut under the Obama plan - it just stops at the same $250,000 income level as everyone else.
But when you want to add a tax cut to amounts over $250,000, then you are giving an additional tax cut only to those whose income exceeds a quarter million dollars.
In a time of great deficits and need for revenue, what is the logic of giving the rich more in tax cuts than you are giving to the middle class and the poor?
* * * PLEASE SEE UPDATE BELOW THE SQUIGGLE * * *
Sun Nov 11, 2012 at 8:43 AM PT: A lot of comments (thanks everyone) talk about changing my 2 sentence talking point to say things like "make the rich pay their fair share" or "it's only a 4.6% tax increase" and things like that.
But these miss the point my frame was intended to convey.
We should BANISH THE PHRASES "TAX INCREASE" AND "RAISE TAXES" FROM OUR VOCABULARY, even if it is used only on billionaires. People have a visceral negative reaction to the idea of RAISING TAXES due to successful Republican messaging over decades.
So stop saying we are going to say raise anyone's taxes.
What we should say is that WE WILL NOT HAVE ANOTHER HUGE TAX CUT GIVEAWAY TO THE RICH, AND ONLY TO THE RICH, to the detriment of everyone else.
So, to repeat:
No to tax increases.
Yes to stopping tax giveaways to the rich.
I added the word "giveaway" to my original framing, because I think it is a great and easy to remember one word message to link to tax cuts for the rich.