Russell B. Long

Russell Billiu Long was the son of Huey Long, and he entered the Senate at thirty in 1948, a year after finishing law school. He stayed thirty-eight years. For fifteen of them he chaired the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that writes federal tax law, which made him one of the most consequential legislators of the postwar era and gave him an unrivalled view of how tax bills actually get made — the view this rhyme reports.