Democrats Raise Bar for Rich From $250,000 to Million

President Barack Obama’s quest to tax those making more than $250,000 a year has been replaced officially with an apparently more politically palatable plan of going after millionaires. Senate Democrats have ditched White House plans to raise taxes on income over $250,000 and settled on a 5.6 percent surtax on annual income of more than a million, The Washington Post reported.

The move brings the proposal into line with Obama’s stump speech, which continually calls on millionaires and billionaires to pay “their fair share.”

The $250,000 dividing line on who’s rich, which Obama pushed during the 2008 campaign, “fuzzies the picture,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told the Post.

Many small business owners and dual-income couples are at or near that level, he explained. “If we’re able to draw a very clear line — people above a million dollars should pay their fair share — it’s much easier to win that argument,” the Post quoted Schumer as saying. “And I think we’re winning it. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, we’re beginning to turn the tax debate around.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., charged that Democrats are reworking the jobs bill for political reasons. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll showed 75 percent overall support raising taxes on millionaires. The poll also showed that 57 percent of Republicans also support such a tax, the Post reported.