You will read an awful lot in coming days about who is wealthy in a political sense.  My definition will be pretty clear from the Obama budget.

If you are a married couple and make more than $250,000 a year, you are getting a tax increase.

If you are single and make more than $200,000 a year, then you are getting a tax increase.

The Obama plan would first reinstate the 36% and 39.6% tax rates for those earning over $250,000/$200,000.

It would also phase out more quickly the ability of those same taxpayers to itemize their deductions.

In other words, you don't get 36% or 39.6% phaseouts, it will be 28%.

Critics immediately predicted that organizations which depend on charitable contributions will make a loud plea to Congress to get rid of this provision.

The money raised by it is part of the effort to extend health care coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

One final provision that will affect higher earning taxpayers is that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2011 means that the capital gains rate will again go to 20% for the top earning taxpayers.

How much money would that raise?

Increase top rate - $338 billion over 10 years
Deduction limits - $179 billion over ten years
20% Capital gains- $118 billion over ten years

That's $636.7 billion from those making over $250,000 per couple or $200,000 for a single person.

I can't see too many Republicans accepting those numbers and voting for that.

I wonder how many more moderate to conservative Democrats will vote for it and whether such a decision could end their career in the Congress or not.

Those are the big questions as we figure out if this plan is going to get through the Congress.