By Sam Goldfarb, CQ Staff

Helped by a long Thanksgiving break, the joint committee on deficit reduction is fast becoming a distant memory, its deliberations — and ultimate collapse — giving way to the next political battle over jump-starting the economy and possible tax cut and unemployment benefit extensions.

Still, the “supercommittee” is not likely to be forgotten completely. As attention turns elsewhere, some lawmakers are sifting through the wreckage of the joint panel to determine whether any of its work can be salvaged.

In particular, lawmakers will undoubtedly take a close look at discussions over the past several months about whether and how to overhaul the tax code. That idea is still sitting on the table, although the timetable and the process for considering it have been altered.

Talk of rewriting the tax system using the expedited procedures and deadlines of the joint committee has been pushed aside. Over the next year, tax writers on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees will work on major tax legislation only if they want to — not because a special panel has forced them into it.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., will be pivotal in any overhaul effort, and not only because of their positions. Both served on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction and know better than most how much — or how little — it was able to accomplish behind closed doors.

In recent months, the idea of a tax code overhaul has risen to the forefront of political discussions for several reasons.

Led by Camp, Republicans have argued that a simplified tax code, with scaled-back tax breaks and lower rates for individuals and corporations, would be a boon to the economy. In addition, scrapping the current code for a new one has been floated as a possible political compromise.

It is likely that Republicans, in their ideal world, would draw up a tax system that would never be palatable to most Democrats. It would probably reduce taxes for those with high incomes and produce no more revenue than current law does. But Republicans have shown signs they might accept higher tax receipts if the structure of the code were more to their liking.

Largely as a result, recent efforts to reach a deficit reduction agreement focused on a fundamental tax overhaul similar to the one enacted in 1986 (PL 99-514), rather than straightforward tax increases.

That broad concept was advanced by the president’s debt commission last year. It was a major part of a plan offered earlier this year by a bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of Six.” And it consumed much of the time and energy of the joint deficit reduction committee, which was charged with finding $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years.

One proposal from Democrats on the joint panel would have set parameters for a tax overhaul and left it to House and Senate standing committees to figure out the details by a deadline next year.

Notably, though, no bipartisan budget group has produced an actual bill or even a detailed plan that could be thoroughly analyzed by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which measures the budgetary effect of tax legislation for Congress.

Therein lies the challenge for anyone who wants to keep alive the overhaul effort.