i remember very clearly when house ways and means committee chair dan rostenkowski sent out his famous request, if you want tax reform. he got an avalanche of responses. i doubt very much we will see a similar plea today would move the public needle at all. enabling indicia number two, there was a rough and ready bipartisan consensus at least at the elite level. there are plenty of people in this room who remember the camp kasten proposal, and along with the perhaps better known bradley gephardt proposal, in late 1984 the congressional budget office did a famous side-by-side of those two proposals and found that it actually looked quite similar. the word for sympathy looked quite some tricky to take a look at that side-by-side and see how a deal could emerge. there was also agreement on a fundamental goal or parameter. democrats and republicans, not all of them but most of them agreed on the grammar of revenue neutrality. and that was very important. and i can tell you having spent some time on the hill recently, no such agreement exists today. another key factor come the alignment of