WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is turning to his biggest television audience of the year to pitch tax increases on the wealthiest Americans and put the new Republican Congress in the position of defending top income earners over the middle class.

As Obama continues to signal what he will propose during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, senior administration officials said during the weekend that he will call for raising the capital gains rate on top income earners and eliminating a tax break on inheritances. The revenue generated by those changes would fund new tax credits and other cost-saving measures for middle-class taxpayers, officials said.

Tax increases are rarely welcomed by congressional Republicans, who now hold majorities in the House and the Senate for the first time in Obama’s presidency. Obama’s tax proposals will likely be dismissed, if not outright ignored, by lawmakers outside the Democratic Party’s liberal base.

“Are they going to agree on everything? Absolutely not. I think we should have a debate in this country between middle class economics and trickle-down economics and see if we can come to an agreement on the things we do agree on,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He said the theme of the speech would be “middle-class economics.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Obama has fallen short on many of his past proposals by failing to establish close ties to Congress.

Obama also is expected to call for lawmakers to make community college free for many students, increase paid leave for workers and enact broad cybersecurity rules.

The State of the Union address will air live at 9 p.m. Tuesday on Channels 2, 4, 9, 11, 13, and on cable news networks CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.