one if congress could have passed it. he signed a tax increase in the top income tax bracket, and he signed an increase in taxation on social security benefits and a bunch of other sensible tax provisions that ended up being the biggest tax increase in history. and this time, none of the republicans who had the courage to vote for the george h.w. bush tax increases were willing to vote for the clinton tax increases. clinton tax increases were done without a single republican vote, and the partisan standoff on taxes in congress has been locked in place since then. republicans have not supported a tax increase since then and sensible fiscal policy has been impossible since then. there were some reasonable republicans in the senate in 1993 who told me privately that