By Kevin G. Hall

McClatchy Newspapers

April 14, 2011

The separate proposals from the commission and the center provide great detail, calling for scrapping the mortgage-interest deduction and the deduction from federal taxes for what homeowners pay in state and local property taxes. Deductions for charitable giving would change, and the so-called Cadillac health care plans offered by employers, which aren't now treated as income, would lose their tax-break status.

"Those four items ... have extraordinarily active and powerful lobbies behind them, and just those four alone would be a huge bite to swallow, especially if you didn't touch any of the other tax expenditures, many of which go to larger businesses or other activities we want to encourage" through the tax code, said Steve Bell, a senior director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a research group whose members are former lawmakers and top staff. "That's why the fight over eliminating these expenditures will be so nasty and bloody. You will see tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars spent on lobbying."

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Economic Policy Project