Indeed, Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, benefits from carried interest, and he doesn’t think it’s fair. The result, he has pointed out, is that in one recent year he was taxed at 17.7 percent on $46 million in income, while his receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent (and, presumably, pays 15.3 percent in Medicare and Social Security taxes on top of that). And keep in mind that $46 million isn’t exactly top pay for a hedge fund manager. The biggest earner in 2009, David Tepper, raked in $4 billion.

It’s estimated that eliminating carried interest would add $24.6 billion to the Treasury over the next decade. That’s a nice piece of change, though not an enormous amount by federal-budget standards. It’s really more a question of fairness than anything else. The Obama administration has proposed getting rid of carried interest as part of its budget proposal last year. But, as often happens with Obama administration proposals, this one has gone nowhere.

Another effort is underway to get rid of carried interest. Senator Charles Schumer of New York said the other day that the Senate is actually going to do something about this long-running tax code horror show. That’s great. But don’t go betting your refund check on it actually happening. Warren Buffett, to his credit, thinks that carried interest needs to go, but he is in the minority. The hedge fund and private equity industries have fought doggedly to retain carried interest every time repeal has been raised in Congress, and so far they’ve succeeded.

Elimination of carried interest has passed in the House of Representatives three times in recent years, most recently last December, but went nowhere in the Senate. The obstacle to removing this open sore from the tax code is the usual one—partisan politics. When carried interest came up for a vote last December, it was approved on a party-line vote, with nearly every Republican voting against it.

At a time when Republicans are opposing the financial reform package on the specious grounds that it means "endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks," opposition to carried interest repeal would be further indication that the GOP is simply carrying water for Wall Street.

I’ll be following this issue, because to me carried interest is the most glaring example of the extent to which Congress is in hock to the Wall Street lobby. If our lawmakers can’t get rid of something so obviously unfair, what good are they? It will be interesting to see what kind of arguments are used in favor of keeping carried interest. I have yet to see a single one that tries very hard to be convincing.

Oh, wait a moment, I have a good one. Why not say that repealing carried interest would mean "endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big hedge funds”? That’ll work.