[chronotis]

You used to be able to deduct _all_ interest expenses, including things like car loan and credit card interest. They removed those deductions back in the '80s but kept the home mortgage deduction as lots of small businesses dual-purpose their property for working and living in.

Fully repealing the mortgage interest deduction would, at this point, recover ~$25B/year, or a little over 2% of the current annual deficit. I suspect the political cost to touching the MID again is much higher than the fiscal benefit to the deficit.

[fred_is_fred]

The MID was already quite well touched, groped actually, with the last tax cuts. Much less people use it because the standard deduction was raised so significantly that very few itemize anymore.