Billionaires' wealth has soared 70% in the pandemic. That's one reason why Democrats wanted to tax them.

Already massively wealthy, America's billionaires saw their collective fortunes soar more than 70% to more than $5 trillion during the pandemic.

That's one reason why congressional Democrats were zeroing in earlier this week on this elite group of roughly 700 people to help pay for their massive social spending package. They abandoned the proposal after facing resistance from several moderate party members.

The skyrocketing stock market has helped push billionaires' net worth up by more than $2 trillion since the start of the pandemic through mid-October, according to a recent report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality, which analyzed Forbes data.