Democrats: $250K isn't rich

Finally they get it. Now their biggest problem, taxing millionaires punitively won't generate enough revenue to amount to a tinkers damn.

Democrats are increasingly abandoning their biggest talking point on taxes: Families earning more than $250,000 a year are “wealthy” and should pay more.

That figure — $250,000 for a household — has been at the tip of the tongue of so many Democratic candidates and lawmakers in the past few elections that it’s become ingrained in the party’s tax philosophy. But they’ve taken a beating from Republicans and have grown increasingly divided on the issue, since that income level would not only cause tax increases for some small businesses but also hit upper-middle-class suburban voters in swing states.

So Democrats on Capitol Hill and the White House are settling on an easier sales pitch: Tax the millionaires, believing that public opinion is firmly on their side that the truly rich should pony up more cash as the economy struggles and the national debt continues to grow. The new rhetoric could force a serious rethinking of the Democratic approach toward the Bush-era tax cuts for high earners that they’ve vilified for the past decade, lawmakers said Wednesday.