Dave Camp, a Republican congressman from Michigan, raised three-quarters of a million dollars in the second quarter of 2013, and ended the period with about $3 million in his campaign coffers — that gives him, according to Bloomberg, the fattest war chest in the House of Representatives. But he doesn’t even have a Democratic opponent lined up yet. How is he convincing people to make him into Congress’s Croesus, then?

Well, Camp is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which basically writes the federal tax code. That would make him a perennially popular friend for all manner of lobbyists, corporations, interest groups, and unions, but now that he and Senator Max Baucus (who runs the Senate Finance Committee, the upper chamber’s committee blessed with tax-law powers) are working on a comprehensive tax-reform package, this is an especially lucrative time. Other members of Camp’s committee have been cashing in, too: The second- and third-most-well-funded members of the House, Republican Aaron Schock of Illinois and Democrat Lloyd Doggett, also sit on the Ways and Means Committee.

As Veronique de Rugy smartly noted yesterday, we really don’t know what we can expect from tax reform yet, whether or not it’ll represent a big step forward in economic efficiency that could carry benefits for all Americans. What we do know is that talk of such a package is a very profitable activity for K Street and certain congressmen.