No Grand Bargain on Budget Raises Doubts for Code Rewrite

Lawmakers seeking to rewrite the U.S. tax code have a narrower path to an agreement because of the partisan divide over how much money the federal government should collect.

For more than two years, congressional tax writers had looked to a bipartisan budget deal to provide them a starting point. A so-called grand bargain might have resolved the revenue debate up front and focused the tax discussions on figuring out which breaks could be trimmed.