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Tax reform: It's just resting its eyes.

February 03, 2010

TaxVox reports that President Obama's moribund tax reform commission, featuring long-disfavored economists Paul Volker and Austan Goolsbee, may be nearly officially dead.

If true, this may be the best possible end to an embarrassing episode. The commission began life under impossible constraints, including the directive that it could consider nothing that raised taxes on those making less than $250,000.

Eventually, the White House put out the word that the panel would produce only a laundry list of possible reforms, but would not make any recommendations. The final blow came in December when the panel’s deadline came and went with only a White House promise that the group would complete its work “after the holidays.” Which holidays, exactly, were never specified.

Now, it seems the tax panel’s work will be rolled into a deficit reduction panel to be named later—another group whose mandate is unclear, to say the least.

It's probably more than just a coincidence that the commission is dying just as the admistration takes Mr. Volker out of mothballs.