Experts: Supercommittee Won't Push Big Tax Reform

Many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle seek a thorough restructuring of the tax code. Although the bipartisan supercommittee charged with suggesting $1.5 trillion of deficit reductions will make small moves in that direction, a major overhaul isn’t in the cards from the committee, several experts said at a panel discussion Tuesday, The Hill reports.

"If you set the bar too high you won't succeed with the primary goal of revenue increases and spending reductions on the mandatory side," said Alex Brill, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "Ten weeks is a pretty tough timeline to produce comprehensive tax reform," he said.

And the path to major reform won’t be easy, Brill said. “How you get from the code you have to code want is a difficult thing to do. Those who worked on the 1986 tax act know it's tough."