The tax flip-flop that wasn't

Big headline from the New York Post this morning. I'll let them explain:

Interesting, except for one small problem: I cannot find any evidence that Sen. Baucus ever opposed the so-called Enterprise Value Tax. In fact, Baucus was a lead sponsor of the bill that proposed EVT in the first place.

"It's total bulls--t," a private equity industry source said this afternoon. "I wish Baucus had been opposing this tax, but the very idea comes from his office."

That was the consensus of everyone I spoke with today, whose reactions to the piece ranged from anger to befuddlement. It is true that Baucus originally wanted all of the private equity taxation issues to be rolled into an omnibus tax bill for 2011, but changed course in June when he proposed the aforementioned legislation.

The only explanation I've heard for this "flip-flop" goes something like: Baucus agreed to include the EVT in a larger jobs package, as a way to offset new spending. That bill died before a vote, after Senate Republicans (and some Democrats) complained that an extension of unemployment insurance was unpaid for. Unemployment was later extended via a separate vote, and Baucus and others now want to revive other parts of the bill. He had been open to replacing EVT with some other tax revenue producer (the "flip") but has since settled on EVT (the "flop").

Yeah, it's pretty tortured.

Too bad the Post chose to play up the Baucus angle, because the paper was right about the legislation being revived.

Seems like a stretch that Senate Democrats would succeed this time around, considering that Congressional membership hasn't changed since last time around (and there is a very short-pre-election window). Apparently the bet is that Republicans have been stripped of their opposing argument -- the unfunded unemployment insurance -- so wouldn't have a rhetorical leg to stand on. Sounds okay on paper, except for the part where Republicans then go back to their "don't raise taxes" standby.

Finally, I should probably make my biases clear on this issue, as I'm new to many readers here at Fortune. I do not agree with the proposed EVT, although it has some persuasive proponents. I am, however, in favor of changing the tax treatment of carried interest from capital gains to ordinary income (also part of the original Baucus bill). No need for me to expound more on that here, although I'm willing to do so in the comments section if some of you want to engage on it...