LIMITS ON CAMPAIGN DONATIONS ARE BACK, AND ETHICS COMMISSION HOLDS SECRET SESSION

Republican congressional leaders have hit upon a plan that will place significant tax relief for married people on President Clinton's desk in the next couple of weeks. There it should rest, for either a signature or veto by the president, on the eve of the GOP national convention beginning the end of this month in Philadelphia.

Should the GOP deliver, this would be the Republicans' second major tax-cut bill of the summer, the other being phased repeal of the death tax. Not a bad season's work.

The marriage-tax penalty hits married couples with higher taxes than if they were single. This has for many years been an indefensible effect of current tax law. Why federal tax policy should be penalizing the formation of married, intact households is beyond most reckoning.

Few are the politicians in either party who want to defend it. Yet for some reason -- inertia, probably -- no Congress since the problem came to light more than a decade ago has ever addressed it. Until now.

President Clinton has weighed in recently, saying he would sign the GOP bill as long as Republicans give him precisely the version of a Medicare prescription drug benefit that he wants.

(Readers should know the GOP House recently passed a Medicare prescription benefit that went to the Senate, but it isn't in the exact form the president wanted.) It is noteworthy that the president's statement didn't include a promised veto if he didn't get this deal from Congress. It is doubtful that so savvy a politician as the president would veto such a popular, commonsense measure just weeks in advance of a presidential election in which he hopes to see his vice president succeed him.

It looks as though in a few short weeks the ball will be in Mr. Clinton's court on marriage-tax penalty repeal. Good for the Republican Congress for playing some intelligent ball, and delivering on the second significant tax-cut bill this summer.