'Let's go with the radical approach." That's what then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bob Packwood exclaimed to his top tax aide during a legendary two-pitchers-of-beer lunch at Washington's Irish Times in the spring of 1986. They were trying to figure out how to save Ronald Reagan's dream of a sweeping tax overhaul that appeared dead in the Senate. That lunch changed history.

Is it time for another 1986 moment? When I asked that question to the people who could make it happen, they were hardly encouraging. "No way. It won't happen," says Wisconsin Republican and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. "There's not enough time and the debt rules would make us raise taxes," he points out. Other naysayers complained that the war between the two parties has made the atmosphere in Washington too poisonous.

But don't be so sure. What everyone inside and outside the Beltway wants to know, given the recent economic funk, is: Where will the growth come from? Certainly not from another round of failed Keynesian spending blowouts. The White House's lame call for an infrastructure bank this week is merely a stimulus redux, and Republicans have seen enough "shovel ready projects" to last two lifetimes. Nor will Republicans, in an era of $1.5 trillion deficits, get very far pitching pro-growth tax rate cuts, a la Reagan 1981, without major offsetting loophole closings. This omelet is going to require cracking some eggs.

There are other reasons to think the stars might finally be aligning for another 1986 triumph. Last year the White House tax-reform commission headed by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker denounced the corporate income tax structure and warned that the "growing gap between the U.S. corporate tax rate [39%, a combination of state average and federal rates] and the corporate tax rates of most other countries [25%] generates incentives for U.S. corporations to shift their income and operations to foreign locations." Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was even more succinct when he said earlier this year: "Everybody who looks at the current system says we can do better than this." Amen.