The world may little note, nor long remember what the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform proposed in its Final Report of November 2005. That may be because the proposal was a mess, actually involving two sets of mutually exclusive, equally politically unpalatable reforms, even for the then-GOP-controlled Congress. It would have been DOA if it had ever formally arrived anywhere. In any event, the Bush administration has now quietly ended the existence of the Panel. So, these questions:

• why even issue an executive order ending the life of the Panel?
• and why now? was any money expended on it (staff, e.g.) after the Report was issued almost two years ago?