The committee's deadline for recommendations is January.
As if to underscore this point, the committee's deadline arrives in perfect alignment with the holiday shopping season.
He said that a resolution extending the committee's deadline would require a majority vote in both chambers of Congress.
The central area of agreement between the two parties — a need for major changes to the tax code — is unlikely in the short time before the committee's deadline.
The release of the letter last night came the day before the committee's deadline for Ms. Stewart to turn over documents, including e-mail messages, relating to her ImClone trades.
In a statement, the panel's leaders, Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said, "After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline".
The world runs on software, and much of it is a buggy mess written on the fly by committees under deadline pressure, re-jigged to adapt to new functions, patched together with unexamined chunks of standby code.
When retired Gen. James L. Jones of the Marines, who led the commission, told the committee, "I think deadlines can work against us and I think a deadline of this magnitude would be against our national interest," Mr. McCain could not have been more satisfied.
But Oliver Letwin's department did not bother replying within the usual timeframe of a few weeks, waiting instead until the committee's recommended deadlines for action had passed.
But Mr. Deal resigned on March 21 to run for governor, minutes before the committee faced a deadline to take action.
There were no objections from any of the 15 Council nations who make up the committee by the deadline on Friday evening, so the sanctions were immediately lifted.
