It’s hard to think of a recent example of an entire country’s tax laws getting changed because of a feeling that one person is making too much money, but that is what is in danger of happening to America in response to the success of one New Yorker, Stephen Schwarzman. Mr. Schwarzman, who made $400 million in 2006, is set to own a stake in the Blackstone Group worth $7.5 billion if the company’s initial public offering goes ahead as planned. The top Democrat and the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee think he’s undertaxed and are moving ahead with a plan to tax partnerships as corporations while also having a look at whether Blackstone’s earnings should be taxed at the higher rate that applies to ordinary income rather than at the lower rate that applies to capital gains.

It’s hard to see what Mr. Schwarzman’s sin was — plenty of other New Yorkers have been making lots of money in the private equity and hedge fund businesses for years. The only difference between Mr. Schwarzman and them is that Mr. Schwarzman, by going public, wants to allow individual investors to participate in his company. Oh, and Mr. Schwarzman threw a 60th birthday party at the Park Avenue Armory at which Rod Stewart, Marvin Hamlisch, and Patti LaBelle performed and lobster was served, and then allowed it to get into the newspapers.

It strikes us that if Congress wants to move to taxing consumption rather than income, it might as well do so on an across-the-board basis rather than singling out entire industries such as hedge funds or private equity just because one figure within the industry happens to be a conspicuous consumer who thereby generates envy. No one is talking much about wanting to raise taxes on William Gates or Warren Buffett, who are richer than Mr. Schwarzman but who either give less newsworthy birthday parties or are more discreet about them.

We’re not entirely sympathetic to Mr. Schwarzman here. He and his wife have given a lot of money over the years to politicians of the tax-raising party, the Democrats. While Mr. Schwarzman has been a backer of President Bush, he hasn’t exactly been a leader of low-tax political or ideological causes in the way that some other businessmen in the city have been. He’s under no obligation to assume such a role; even Democrats don’t deserve to have the tax rules changed on them midstream. A tax increase aimed at Mr. Schwarzman would ensnare lots of other businessmen and probably even some who have been more politically consistent. It’d be a catastrophe for New York City, where many hedge funds and private equity funds make their homes.

But a look at the records of Mr. Schwarzman’s state and local campaign contributions over the years — $2,000 to Mark Green’s 2001 mayoral campaign, $11,000 to campaigns by Alan Hevesi, $1,000 to William Thompson Jr., $11,000 to Edward Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania — make it clear that he wasn’t exactly a partisan of the low-tax side of the debate. The political contributions made in the name of Mr. Schwarzman’s wife Christine tell an even more illuminating tale. She put $25,000 into Comptroller Carl McCall’s campaign for governor of New York and $20,000 into Hevesi’s campaign for comptroller. She did back a tax-cutter, William Weld, in his campaign for governor, but then he was another private equity type.

It’s hard to escape the impression that these contributions were related to Blackstone’s business, which to a large degree is managing money for state and local government pension funds. Blackstone Capital Partners V, the company’s largest and most recently raised private equity fund, raised $18.1 billion in 2006, of which fully 54%, by far the largest fraction, was for public pension funds. Blackstone customers include New York funds that are or were managed by Messrs. Hevesi, Thompson, and McCall, and a Pennsylvania fund whose trustees are appointed by Governor Rendell.

To oversimplify, but not by much, Mr. Schwarzman is on the verge of finding himself worth $7.5 billion not only because he is a good investor, but, even more so, because he and his company are good at convincing Democratic politicians to invest large chunks of public pension money with him that generate large fees.

So while we aren’t entirely sympathetic to Mr. Schwarzman, we are emphatically unsympathetic to the politicians who want to raise his taxes. Their colleagues have taken campaign contributions from Mr. Schwarzman while committing public money to Blackstone at fees rich enough to make him worth $7.5 billion. If the politicians think that’s too much, rather than raising taxes on a whole industry as a way of retaliating for their own generosity, they could rethink whether they want to pay Mr. Schwarzman’s fees on the public money they manage. It’d be a more direct and straightforward way of dealing with the matter than a big tax increase.