Senate Finance Committee members this week supported seeminglycontradictory goals by voting to extend narrow tax breaks as theytouted an overhaul of the tax code that would imperil some of thosesame benefits.

A $205.1 billion proposal, approved yesterday by the panel on a19-5 bipartisan vote, would provide benefits for corporateresearch, wind energy producers and financial-services companiesdoing business outside the U.S. It also would prevent the expansionof the alternative minimum tax for 2012 and 2013.

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