I think it would take tremendous political capital to do this. Every favored tax treatment would be a hill to die on and there's a risk that the opposition woukd win on a platform of adding some back in, destroying precedent against changes immediately.<p>So you'd not only have to win the battles, you'd need enough manpower to occupy the territory once the dust cleared. That occupation will last for a couple election cycles at least; in the US it would be best done by an incoming president popular enough to have a good shot at re-election after.
Yes, the best solutions are to eliminate the Mortgage Interest Deduction (which definitely won't decimate the already critically wounded housing industry) and Employer-Provided Health Insurance Deduction (which definitely won't push millions more people out of health insurance, "forcing" insurance companies to increase their rates to maintain their margins and inefficiencies).<p>Insanity.