There was only one lane open as I made my trip to Atlanta; the other three were blocked with those unhappy yellow and black make-believe barrels used by the highway folks. Traffic flow was constrained by efforts to repair potholes and broken pavement. We in the slow lane had little choice in the matter. Instead of 70, we were slowed to 20 miles per hour. We had to accept our fate, or find another route at the next exit.

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA, P.L. 112-240) may be more significant for what it does not do than for what it does. Hopes for a ‘‘grand bargain’’ were not realized. In fact, ATRA does (almost) nothing to address the major fiscal problems that the United States continues to face.

The home mortgage interest deduction is the largest explicit tax deduction for households in the federal income tax code. Politicians have been reluctant to even consider removing this deduction, believing it to be one that provides significant benefits to middle-class taxpayers and encourages homeownership. These benefits are greatly over- stated: most taxpayers do not benefit from this deduction at all or receive a very small benefit. The only taxpayers who do receive a large benefit are those in the upper income brackets. Taxpayers and the entire economy would be better served by removing the mortgage interest deduction and lowering marginal tax rates to offset the change.

A new Mercatus study suggests an additional, largely unexamined cost of the United States’ tax-policy uncertainty: “unproductive” or “destructive” entrepreneurship—the diversion of resources away from economically productive activities to the unproductive activity of lobbying for preferential tax-policy treatment.