MISSOURI COMMENTARY: TO GET ALL YOUR WISHES, SEE YOUR CONGRESSMAN

Happy new tax year. It's never too early to think about your income tax situation. Call your accountant soon. You may get a discount for seeking help in the off-season. If you wait until April 14 -- like most of us -- it will cost you a pretty penny.

Tax year 1995 may be more exciting when we celebrate our next new year. Congress seems poised to make a fresh assault on the Internal Revenue Code.

The 1970s and early 1980s were the golden age of loopholes -- not accidental loopholes, but well-crafted, devious loopholes skillfully guided through Congress by highly paid loophole lobbyists. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. Russell Long (D-La.) were the commanders-in-chief of the Loophole Creation and Preservation Society in the U.S. Senate (an affiliate of the Senate Finance Committee). Congressman Danny Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) was their counterpart in the House of Representatives (a branch of the Ways and Means Committee).

Members of the Senate Finance Committee or the House Ways and Means Committee had the inside track to be present at the creation of loopholes. Fair was fair. The committee chairman and ranking minority member of these committees were entitled to half of the new loopholes and the rest of the committee divided up the other half. All you had to do was wait your turn.

When bills came to the floor, it was a bit more difficult. In the House, tax bills sometimes came with a rule that limited amendments. It was open season in the Senate, but for all practical purposes, you had to have Long's and Dole's permission to add your loophole to the already heavily larded loophole pie.

Dole and Long would get rid of an insistent colleague by saying "talk it over with the committee staff." The tax-writing committee staffers, by unanimous acclaim, were the most arrogant people on Capitol Hill. They hated to have their loophole recipe disturbed. They had worked hard to cook up all the loopholes created in committee. Why give some jerk senator any encouragement to think up one for himself! The staffers would chastise senators for intruding on their time.

Once in a while, Sen. Long would throw a floor loophole to a fellow Southerner. I remember one dealing with a Birmingham lumber yard. The loophole didn't mention the lumber yard by name. It was written in intentionally arcane language so that no one in the Senate could understand except one surly committee staff member.

There was a one-term senator from Colorado named Floyd Haskell who was a tax lawyer before he came to the Senate. Often senators consulted him on "loophole" amendments. In fact, he was referred to as the "Great Loophole Detective." Too bad he didn't stick around.

In 1986, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and Congressman Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) instituted the tax-reform movement. Do away with all these crazy loopholes, they argued, and save billions of dollars. Use those savings to lower everyone's tax rates. Seemed like a decent idea. It was too decent to last.

Many members of Congress want to go back in the loophole business. Loopholes are good politics. Loopholes are like pork-barrel grants. Give someone a fancy loophole and he'll remember you forever -- supposedly.

So now everyone is in the loophole game. There are macro loopholes, like the middle income tax cuts being proposed. There are macro/micro loopholes like lowering the capital gains tax or reducing the "marriage penalty" or reducing taxes on upper income Social Security benefits or reducing taxes on the estates of billionaires.

Then there are the micro loopholes proposed by various commercial and industrial groups, all of which want a bite at the loophole apple: financial institutions, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, airlines, etc. You name it. Now's the time to hire your Washington lobbyist to press your case ever so stealthfully.

Two years ago, the name of the game was reducing the budget deficit. That's a nice tune to hum in an election campaign. But in real life Washington, cutting the budget is drudgery. Loopholes are more fun. You can really get motivated by the chance to create a new loophole for a buddy.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.