Well, score one for alert anti-tax conservatives:

Congressional negotiators briefly reopened the conference proceedings on a sweeping financial regulatory bill on Tuesday after Senate Republicans who had supported an earlier version of the measure threatened to block final approval unless Democrats removed a proposed tax on big banks and hedge funds. Conference negotiators voted to eliminate the proposed tax and adopted a new plan to pay the projected five-year, $20 billion cost of the legislation.

The glass-half-full crowd will be pleased that another effort to pass a noxious, anti-growth tax has been stymied. The half-empty set will bemoan the fact that the bill can now be passed.

On this one, I think the half-fullers have it right. For one thing, even the New York Times concedes, “The need to reopen negotiations was slightly embarrassing for Democrats and represented a price they had paid for rushing to complete the legislation.” Yeah, slightly. And it reinforced the case that the Democrats, if they could, would grind the economy to a standstill with an array of punitive taxes. In sum, the tax was awful policy, the very sort of thing conservatives should work furiously to prevent. That they did so successfully in this case is both good politics and good for the country.