The tobacco plant, Nicotiana tabacum. Public-domain photograph.
Clinton's 1993 budget raised income taxes to attack the deficit.
If money is tight, a higher gas tax is a weekly fact and an income-tax increase may not reach you.
If you are in the middle, the top-bracket change is aimed above you, and the deficit argument is about your future taxes.
If you have savings, a higher top rate changes the after-tax return and the politics of the bond market.
The 1993 budget law raised the top income tax rate and the federal gasoline tax.
The stated target was the deficit.
Budget surpluses did arrive later in the decade, during a boom, which is a fact about the years that followed and not a proof that one statute produced them.
Source: Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.