Senate Finance Committee members this week supported seemingly contradictory goals by voting to extend narrow tax breaks as they touted an overhaul of the tax code that would imperil some of those same benefits.

A $205.1 billion proposal, approved yesterday by the panel on a 19-5 bipartisan vote, would provide benefits for corporate research, wind energy producers and financial-services companies doing business outside the U.S. It also would prevent the expansion of the alternative minimum tax for 2012 and 2013.

“Tax reform is so monumental, is like the earth being hit by a huge asteroid,” said Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who distinguished the bill from the trade-offs that would be part of an eventual tax overhaul. “We all know that we're going to have to do some things that we don't want to do at all, and I think people are kind of prepared to.”