Feeling like you haven't been disappointed by a Democrat in too long? Well let me help you with that. One of the suggestions that has been floated as part of a deal to reduce the deficit is the elimination of the "carried interest" loophole. It works like this: If you're a hedge-fund manager, you make your money by taking 20 percent of the profits of the fund you manage. This can be a lot of money -- hedge-fund king John Paulson made over $5 billion last year. But unlike the little people, hedge-fund managers don't pay federal income taxes on that income.

David Brooks is on the New York Times op-ed page because he's the kind of conservatives liberals like -- friendly, reasonable-sounding, uncomfortable with vilifying his opponents, even if he almost always comes down on the side of whatever Republicans want to do. Not that elite liberals (e.g. people who write for magazines like this one) don't find him maddening, but the Times' readers like him. Nevertheless, it's never comfortable to bash your own side, even when they deserve it. So Brooks should get some credit for his column today, which almost sounds like it could have been written by Paul Krugman:

Republicans in Congress softened their position on taxes yesterday, when 34 GOP senators voted to repeal tax breaks for the ethanol industry. The proposal, which was added as an amendment to an economic-development bill, failed, but the vote shows that at least some Republican lawmakers are willing to back revenue hikes to cut the deficit.

Bloomberg reports that the Obama administration is mulling employer-side payroll tax cuts as a form of additional stimulus.

The idea, which is in preliminary stages of discussion, is among several being talked about at the White House as the economy holds center stage for the administration and Congress. The unemployment rate in May rose to 9.1 percent, the highest level this year.

Whenever liberals want to raise taxes on millionaires or businesses, conservatives start saying that if we raise taxes, those people will take their money elsewhere. This argument came up in New York, when Gov. Cuomo rejected a millionaire's tax in favor of a budget that cut funding for schools, homeless shelters, and a slew of other programs that help both normal people and the less well off. New Yorkers were supposed to worry that if the state raised taxes, all of the bankers, who do provide a notable chunk of the state's tax revenue, would move to Connecticut.

Senate Democrats plan to introduce taxes on the extremely wealthy to combat Republicans' insistence that taxes must be off the table in a deficit-reduction deal. According to The Hill, they want to either cut the Bush tax cuts for people earning over $1 million a year or alternatively add a 3 to 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires and billionaires.

The Minnesota Vikings reached a deal yesterday to begin construction on a new football stadium in a town just outside Minneapolis. The $1.06 billion stadium will receive a mix of both public and private funding: The team will pay $407 million, and the rest will come from taxpayers. Ramsey County (which includes St. Paul) would institute a 0.5 percent sales tax increase to gain $350 in revenue, while the state government would raise $300 million for the project through targeted measures, such as a professional sports memorabilia tax.