Schumer & Co, Slopping Away at the Trough
Democrats Split Over Bill Affecting Backers
Tax Measure Targets Hedge Funds
Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 7, 2007; Page A01
In early June, as the Senate Finance Committee began examining how a new breed of Wall Street titan could be paying a special low tax rate on executives' salaries, one of the richest of them, hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, cut the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee a check for $28,500.
Just days later, with DSCC Chairman Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) equivocating on legislation to raise taxes on publicly traded equity firms, hedge fund giant James H. Simons, who earned $1.7 billion last year at his Renaissance Technologies LLC, donated another $28,500 to the DSCC.
By late July, Schumer was off the fence -- and on the side of the hedge funds and private-equity firms in opposing the Democratic legislation.
. . . The measure has deeply divided Democrats, pitting a rank and file that has railed for…