By NBC's Libby Leist:  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continued Democratic attacks on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Thursday morning, saying the Republican has shown he doesn’t belong at the negotiating table for the debt ceiling talks.  

“Even Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell seem to understand the seriousness of the situation,” Reid said as he opened the Senate for business.  “They're willing to negotiate in good faith, which I appreciate.  Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shown that he shouldn't even be at the table.” 

Democrats pushed back Wednesday night after Cantor told reporters that President Obama “abruptly” left Wednesday evening’s negotiating session.  Cantor’s account was disputed by Democrats who accused Cantor of “juvenile” behavior and interrupting the president during the meeting.  Democrats were also quick to point out that Cantor himself had walked out of earlier debt talks led by Vice President Biden, a point Reid reiterated Thursday. 

Reid warned of the consequences of default, saying payments to the military would be in jeopardy and that “millions” of Americans would lose their jobs.  “If we allow this nation for the first time in its history to default on our national obligations, it will not only be a black mark on our reputation but also a massive financial disaster will sweep the world into global depression.”

By msnbc.com's Tom Curry:  In a tweet Monday morning, freshman Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked, “If the President was serious about reforming tax code, why would he want a trillion dollars in new taxes?”

The answer from Obama at his press conference: he wants more revenue so he can both avoid having to make cuts in programs that would hurt lower- and middle-income people -- and so he can simultaneously reduce deficits and government borrowing.

But Obama stressed a crucial point Monday: more revenue doesn’t necessarily mean higher income tax rates. More revenue can come from tax reform.

Obama had been proposing higher tax rates on upper-income people since he campaigned for president in 2008. And he succeeded in last year’s health care reform bill in raising Medicare taxes on people with income in excess of $200,000, a tax increase which will raise $87 billion over the next ten years.

But taking his cue from last December’s report from the Bowles-Simpson commission which he appointed, Obama reiterated Monday that he’s willing to give up his demand for higher income tax rates on top earners -- in return for scrapping or curtailing deductions and credits.

Bowles and Simpson say such an approach would raise more revenue than the current tax code, partly by getting rid of some of the inefficiency and cost of compliance in the current code.

The increased revenue could also come partly from a less complex tax system leading to faster economic growth. But with lower tax rates and fewer deductions, the net result would be some taxpayers paying more in taxes than they do right now.

The caveat, as Obama signaled in his press conference: any redesigned tax code would need to be “sufficiently progressive.” Mutual agreement on the definition of that term would likely be the toughest nut for Republicans and the president to crack.

A pertinent fact has gone mostly unnoticed in this tax debate – and it’s cause for a little optimism.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last week that tax revenues for the first three quarters of this fiscal year were 8.5 percent higher than in the same period last year and individual income taxes, which is what the government most relies on, showed a gain of 24 percent.

These higher revenues are being generated not by higher tax rates but by an increase in incomes and from more people working: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 242,000 more people were working last month than in June of 2010. (Yes, that’s even though 14 million people looking for jobs and are unable to find them.)

Tax revenues are recovering – even if they’re still not at the level they were in 2007. At this point in fiscal year 2007, the government had collected $885 billion in individual income tax revenue; that compares to about $814 billion so far this fiscal year.

By msnbc.com's Tom Curry:  How will Friday’s depressing employment report affect Sunday’s debt limit talks between President Obama and congressional leaders?

Too early to tell for sure but consider how bad the news was: with 14.1 million seeking work and unable to find it, there are now 5.6 more people unemployed than three summers ago, in June of 2008.

At first blush the reaction was true to form – party leaders blamed their opponents and reverted to their economic dogma – seeming to harden their positions going into Sunday’s parley.

Republicans argued that the moribund economy cannot tolerate any tax increases, saying such a move would siphon off money that might be used for spending and investment.

“As we address the debt limit increase we shouldn’t do so in a way that raises taxes and impedes the ability of small businesses to create jobs and get people back to work,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

In a mirror image, Dems used the new jobs data as evidence that no, really, it is spending cuts that would further depress the sickly economy – even though big reductions in spending are at the heart of what Obama and congressional leaders are negotiating about on Sunday.

A leading Democrat, House Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Chris Van Hollen told NBC’s Chuck Todd, “The disappointing jobs numbers this morning underscore what a lot of us have been saying, which is that even as we work to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit over the next ten years, we (should) do nothing in the short term to harm the economy – and deep, immediate cuts would do just that.”

So in Sunday’s talks, Obama and House Speaker John Boehner will find themselves squeezed even more tightly between the true believers in their own ranks.

How can future deficits be reduced if most GOP members resist raising more revenue either through higher tax rates or by cutting deductions and credits – most of which go to middle-and upper-income people?

And conversely – how can deficits be reduced without cutting spending, which at least in the short term, most Democratic members resist doing, except in defense?

So instead of the “deep, immediate cuts” that Van Hollen warned against, Obama and Boehner could try to design a plan that made smaller cuts in the next year or two and deeper cuts starting in say, 2014 or 2015. And likewise they could propose revenue increases that would take effect only in 2014 and 2015.

But the question then would be: would bond market investors find such a plan credible in reducing the government’s growing debt burden?

Van Hollen seemed to reject one idea that has been much discussed in recent days as part of the debt/deficit parley – changing the inflation index used to cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients.

“I’m not saying we’re going to tinker with COLA,” he told Todd.

Von Hollen reverted to the familiar Democrat argument: income tax rates, at least for upper-income people, ought to be lifted to where they were when Bill Clinton left office.

He also said people earning over $500,000 a year should begin to have their itemized deductions phased out.  

A deduction limiting proposal similar to what Van Hollen described would raise $1.1 trillion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would affect about one out of every four taxpayers.