“We live in very partisan times.”

So begins Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in a 340 page report his staff released last December entitled “Comprehensive Tax Reform for 2015 and Beyond.” Indeed, if Benjamin Franklin were alive today he might say: “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes… and partisan gridlock.”

Yet, there is reason to be more sanguine about the prospects for tax reform, if only because it is politically desirable for both a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, as the system is so broken everyone agrees the status quo is unacceptable. This common sense of urgency and an appreciation of the magnitude of the problem have given rise to a level of consensus around tax reform that gives us hope.

For starters, the two most significant corporate tax reform proposals put forward recently, one from then-House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and the other from then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), have about 70 percent overlap. Along with the Administration’s proposed reforms included in its FY2015 budget request, there is general agreement across all three on the need to broaden the corporate tax base by eliminating certain preferences and deductions, and lower the corporate rate. They all agreed the U.S. worldwide taxation regime is outdated and anti-competitive, especially the disincentive under current law to repatriate foreign earnings which has led U.S. firms to indefinitely park $2 trillion overseas (of course there is less agreement on what to replace it with, but first things first). All three reform proposals also included the repeal or reform of several of the largest and most lucrative tax subsidies for oil and gas companies, including Intangible Drilling Costs, Percentage Depletion Allowance, Last-in First-Out Accounting, and others.

When Congress enacted the Tax Reform Act of 1986 almost 30 years ago, it accomplished much of what Congress is trying to do now. It pushed the U.S. to the competitive edge in the international system by eliminating preferences and deductions in order to lower overall rates. Since then, other countries, especially industrialized countries in Europe, have leapfrogged the U.S. by slashing corporate rates. That said, the distortions of our current system mean that many U.S. corporations pay far below the statutory rate. But clearing out the code of special interest tax breaks and considering other revenue models would allow lower rates while creating a more level playing field.

Since 1986, Congress has added new (and old) deductions and special provisions (back) into the tax code. Not only have special provisions grown in size that they now exceed $1 trillion in foregone revenue and equal yearly discretionary appropriations, they are obviously bad policy in their current form. The R&D tax credit, meant to incentivize investment in research, is badly targeted and routinely extended retroactively, applying to spending that has already taken place. The mortgage interest deduction, intended to encourage home ownership over renting, offers little or nothing to low- and middle-income individuals who might need the incentive, does not boost home ownership rates over countries without the incentive (such as Canada), inflates housing prices, and instead provides a regressive subsidy to the wealthy. And on and on. TCS applauded the idea of “zeroing out” all existing tax expenditures and asking lawmakers to submit written justification for reinstating them.

You don’t have to take too many steps back to see why there are so many areas of agreement about tax reform, because what the nation has today is just bad policy. And we all generally agree on where we are headed, if not entirely on how we will get there. In tax reform, like many issues, Congress spends too much time focusing on the places where they disagree, creating the toxic environment we have become accustomed to where nothing gets done (see: 113^th Congress). Maybe, with tax reform, the costs of inaction are such a political liability that it transcends partisanship and threatens an even more sacred institution in Washington: incumbency.