Josh Barro is wary of combining tax reform with fiscal measures to fix the deficit:
I think tax reform becomes even harder to sell if you combine it with a fiscal adjustment on either side of the ledger: you have to simultaneously sell people the idea that they will pay strange new taxes and that they will pay more and/or get less. I think there is a good reason that the 1985 Social Security reforms (which started a rise in retirement ages and raised the payroll tax) and the 1986 Tax Reform Act (an essentially revenue-neutral reform that cut rates and expanded the tax base) were handled separately.
But that required some kind of bipartisan cooperation. We have a president who could pull this off. But a GOP?
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan