Yes folks, the 1970s television show where contestants would perform amazing and often dangerous stunts is back. In its new form, members of Congress say unbelievably ridiculous things in support of the special tax break received by managers of hedge funds and private equity funds.

Just to remind people, this tax break allows fund managers to pay a tax rate of just 15 percent on their earnings, as opposed to the 25 percent rate paid by teachers and firefighters or the 35 percent rate paid by higher paid doctors and lawyers. Fund managers, many of whom earn more than $100 million a year, need this special tax break in order to cope with the soaring cost of vacation homes, yachts, private jets and other necessities for people in their income class.

The story being pitched by the members of Congress who support the tax break is that it would hurt public pension funds if fund managers had to pay the same tax rates as ordinary workers. They argue that higher taxes would be passed in on higher fees, which would lower pension fund returns. Incredible story, let’s do the numbers.

First, we need to get an idea of how much money is at stake. According to the Congressional Budget Office, eliminating the fund manager tax break could raise $4 billion to $6 billion in revenue each year. Let’s take the $6 billion number. Suppose that 15 percent of this tax increase, or $900 million, comes from the fees that the fund managers earn off public pension funds.

The next question is how much of this tax increase can be passed on the form of higher fees. Let’s assume that the figure is 20 percent. In other words, for each dollar that we increase the tax rate on fund managers, they can raise the fees they charge their clients by 20 percent. (How much of a raise can you get from your boss if Congress raised your taxes?) This means that the public pension funds can expect to pay an additional $180 million each year in fees, if the fund managers lose their tax break.

The Federal Reserve Board (Table L.119) puts the current value of public pension funds at just over $3 trillion, which means that eliminating the fund manager tax break would reduce their returns by approximately 0.006 percentage points annually. Alternatively, we can say that eliminating the tax break will cost state and local governments approximately 3 percent as much the move raises for the federal government.

Apparently several members of Congress are prepared to make this incredible argument as a reason for not eliminating this special tax break for the country’s richest people. According to the Wall Street Journal, the list of members of Congress prepared to make this argument includes Representative Joe Baird of Washington State and Senator Maria Cantwell, also of Washington State. The WSJ also lists several other members of Congress who feel the need to move cautiously before subjecting the very rich to the same tax rates as other workers.

So, that’s truly incredible. As they always warn at the end of the show, don’t try this at home kids. Your parents might whack you for making such a stupid argument, or at least send you to summer school to learn some arithmetic.