Crafting Structural Tax Legislation in a Highly Polarized Congress

This essay attempts to connect the process and product of tax legislation. It argues that changes in the tax legislative process over the last 25-30 years have affected the type of legislation produced by Congress. After identifying several developments, including the changing composition of professional tax staffers working on legislation, the essay shows that a decline in one particular category of legislation - complex change to improve the execution of current policies by advancing the efficiency, equity, or administrability of existing law - may be a natural outgrowth of changing legislator and staff interests and incentives