Senator Schumer is often on the other side of us in policy disputes, but he is a tenacious advocate, and when he is on the right side of an issue, he deserves a tip of the hat. Especially when New York’s other senator is ducking the issue, apparently too busy running for president to take a stand on an issue that is important to the state that elected her. It’s even more especially so when Mr. Schumer’s position requires bucking that of the newspaper that stands for left-wing conventional wisdom.

That it does on the matter of two tax increases that have been proposed on hedge funds and private equity funds, one that would tax carried interest of money mangers in funds as ordinary income rather than capital gains and another that would impose a corporate income tax on funds that go public. These two ideas are being hustled through the Congress in the wake of the reports of rapid rises in weath of hedge fund captains and in the wake of Blackstone’s IPO.

At a hearing in Congress this week on the tax increases, Mr. Schumer was emphatic. America “shouldn’t do anything” to “make it easier for capital and ideas to flow to London or anywhere else,” Mr. Schumer said, according to an account by the Bloomberg wire. “I will fight as hard as I can to protect the interests of New York, and ensure that it remains the preeminent financial center in the world.”

A Reuters account had the senator insisting, “I will not stand for treating financial-services partnerships one way, while all the other partnerships are treated another way.” He added, according to Reuters, “This isn’t to say that we should make no changes to how carried interest or hedge funds are taxed, but we should treat everyone fairly and everyone equally.…If we are going to change how we tax financial partnerships, we should treat oil and gas and venture capital and real estate and everything else the same.”

Mr. Schumer makes a lot of sense. Those who recall his energy in opposing Justices Roberts and Alito and in winning control of the Senate for the Democrats as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee can be pleased to have Mr. Schumer on the right side, at least on this. If Senator Grassley of Iowa, abetted by the New York Times in its bid to become a “national” paper, wants to single out New York’s financial industry for higher taxes, maybe the Senate should take a closer look at the ethanol subsidies and tax breaks flowing to the Midwest like so much high fructose corn syrup.

If Mr. Schumer fails to rein in the enthusiasm of his Democratic colleagues like Rep. Charles Rangel and Senator Baucus for these tax increases, at least the prospect remains that a veto by President Bush, whose administration has opposed the tax hikes, would save the day. With two of the leading Democratic presidential contenders, Senators Edwards and Obama, already backing at least one of the tax increases, and with Senator Clinton hemming and hawing, it’s a moment for those who share Mr. Schumer’s desire to protect the interests of New York to savor the fact that there is a Republican in the Oval Office.