A law to get Trump to do what decency requires of other candidates

I'm counting every one of you people as dependents!

When every candidate in three decades has felt compelled to release their tax returns, you start to think there doesn’t really need to be a law about it. Just the public pressure to show that you’re not in the pocket of malevolent forces, a major contributor to malevolent forces—or simply a bloody great tax cheat—is enough to get most people to open their financial books. But then, most people aren’t whirlwinds of Doritos dust kept aloft by hot air who didn't pay a dime the last time anyone peeked at their tax returns.

Okay … maybe there needs to be a law after all.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, introduced legislation on Wednesday that would require major presidential candidates to publicly disclose their three most recent personal income tax returns, a challenge to the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, who has resisted releasing his filings. …

Mr. Wyden’s measure, called the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, would apply to Democratic and Republican candidates, but both of the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have disclosed their tax returns.

But this is the Mitch McConnell-controlled Senate, and no one knows where the pens used to sign actual legislation are to be found. Besides, isn’t this a vacation day? In any case, Wyden’s bill is almost certainly going to be ignored until it goes away.

So we can all just go on assuming that Trump’s biggest charitable contribution was to Toys for ISIS and that he had an annual income of $12.42, plus some bus tokens. Otherwise, why not release the forms?