(FORTUNE Magazine) – Congress' pending tax bills are retro to the max. As in the bad old days, they bestow special favors on narrow interests, from bakers to skydivers. They benefit people with lots of money by cutting the capital-gains levy and expanding incentives to save. One even includes a tax break for killing whales. In the most politically incorrect act of 1997, senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) put a provision in the Senate bill allowing whaling captains to expense up to $7,500 a year for outfitting for the spring hunt. Now even Republican staffers in the House, eager to undercut a senator's project, have taken to chanting "Save the whales!" in meetings as a way to defeat the measure. But Murkowski, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, stands defiant on the bloody deck of the S.S. Boondoggle. He defends the giveaway as legitimate protection for an ancient Eskimo rite providing subsistence to remote Arctic Circle villages. Besides, this is the Martini '90s; what's 30 whales a year? Why not "Save the whalers!" for a change? The $300,000-a-year provision may actually survive.

--Jeffrey H. Birnbaum