Sen. Harry Reid is serious about making sure Congress doesn’t give middle-class Americans the heartfelt holiday gift of a tax increase. So serious that he’ll cancel Christmas if he has to, to make sure a payroll tax cut bill gets passed.

“We will make sure we pass this tax cut for the middle class,” Reid said. “We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.”

President Barack Obama is on board with Reid’s plan: “He said, ‘Michelle and the girls are going to have a great time in Hawaii, they don’t need me there,’ ” Reid informed reporters Tuesday.

Things probably won’t reach that point in the Senate, where most Republicans and Democrats agree that the payroll tax cut Congress instituted last December should be extended into the coming year; they just can’t agree on how much to extend it by, or how to pay for it.

But after weeks of arguments and even a couple of votes, the parties haven’t resolved the issue, and it’s threatening to push other must-do items into the holiday break.

Before the Senate disbands until mid-January, they have to approve a budget (they actually have to do that by next Friday), pass an extension of the payroll tax cut, pass an extension of unemployment insurance, and vote on the president’s nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Balanced Budget Amendment.

If they don’t, Reid said he won’t let them go home.

And if that happens, Reid blames the Republicans in the Senate and the House.

“(They) continue to squander valuable time by trying to appease the Tea Party. The choice is up to the Republicans,” Reid said. “They have these softballs floating around out there and they can’t even see them ... if they could just relax for a minute and catch one of these softballs floating around, I think everybody would be better off.”

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