Speaking of the Path to Prosperity, it is worth noting that the House Budget Committee is not in charge of drafting tax legislation. That is the responsibility of the House Ways and Means Committee. While I focused on strategic political calculations, a more prosaic reason for Ryan’s non-vacuous vagueness on tax policy is presumably that the granular details of tax policy are not his legislative turf as chairman of the House Budget Committee. Ryan did, however, manage to get every Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee to embrace his broad approach, including Dave Camp, its chairman.

Now it is incumbent on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee to devise a workable proposal in line with the broad goals laid out by the Path to Prosperity. The problem, however, is that without any prospect of meaningful cooperation from the Democrats on the Committee or support from the White House, this will be a mostly academic exercise. In an ideal world, Camp would secure the cooperation of some of the Democrats on the Committee. The Wyden-Gregg proposal suggests that there is some room for substantive bipartisan tax reform.