Every single loophole in the tax code has a ferocious defender, a fact that has scared off all the recent administrations from attempting tax reform. So even just the loophole closing piece is going to be like Guadalcanal. Raising consumption taxes on top of that — against the ferocious opposition of the retail sector — will be Guadalcanal on stilts.

The Republicans are going into this process from a position of extreme weakness. The first temptation will be to do the easy stuff, which is cutting the taxes, while skipping the hard stuff — closing loopholes and finding substitute revenue sources. The second temptation will be to scale back the whole enterprise so that you can declare victory with a much smaller bill. The third temptation will be to can the border tax, which is associated with Paul Ryan and which the Freedom Caucus already opposes.

By the time legislation is crafted, probably in early summer, the good basic framework could transmogrify into something completely ugly — a bill that explodes the national debt while handing massive benefits to the rich. Then we’d be back where we were with health care reform, with a bill that benefits very few and which no one likes.