"The conference will unite around tax reform," said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who hosted the first "listening session" on the issue Thursday in his first-floor Capitol office. "The window is now."

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) led the session, offering polling and focus-group data showing that voters are hungry for simpler, fairer tax laws. Camp has started drafting legislation that would wipe out the current welter of exemptions and deductions and replace them with sharply lower rates, an approach championed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairmen of Obama's fiscal commission.

"We're not going to take the current code and see what comes out. We're going to take a blank piece of paper and see what goes back in," said Camp, who advocates a streamlined code with just two brackets and a top rate of 25 percent.