Shikha Dalmia has in the past written factually inaccurate criticisms of the “reform conservative” movement and the Lee-Rubio tax plan, and I have pointed out the inaccuracies. She has come back with a nearly-2400-word essay at Reason’s website accusing me of “nitpicking” her and evading the deeply important issues that she and others have raised. (In fact, I have responded to most of the very articles to which she links.)
Dalmia, in her first column on these subjects, had supported her characterization of Senator Mike Lee as a fan of big government by saying that he had sponsored legislation to require employers to offer flextime. This was incorrect. When this was pointed out to her, she changed the text of her column to say that the legislation would require flextime as part of collective-bargaining agreements. This was also incorrect. Dalmia apparently thought that this example was a sufficiently strong illustration of her thesis to include in her article. I thought it was therefore worth pointing out that she was completely wrong about it. (She apparently disagrees, as that second false claim is still posted at The Week.)
This may be the sort of correction that Dalmia considers “nitpicking.” I think that before we argue about whether to praise or damn Mike Lee’s tendencies toward big government, we should figure out the extent to which he even has them–by, for example, actually bothering to look at the language of the bill we’re talking about. If some deep philosophical point is built on a factual mistake, then maybe it’s not a point worth debating.
In a column last week, Dalmia argued that Lee-Rubio’s “big losers would be the many families making between $150,000 and $411,500.” She offered no evidence for this claim and there is literally no reason to think it is true. I offered, in response, some reasons for thinking that a lot of people in this income range would pay lower tax bills under Lee-Rubio. For one very important thing, the Lee-Rubio plan cuts tax rates on income between $75,000 and $150,000, and people making more than that pocket the savings. I noted that Lee and Rubio had offered examples of how their plan would affect households that showed a couple making $200,000 a year paying lower taxes.
Dalmia claimed that the Lee-Rubio examples actually backed her point. I pointed out that she was once again making a simple mistake. She now partly acknowledges that mistake—but goes on to say that the Lee-Rubio examples might be wrongly or misleadingly calculated. Some might say that her paragraphs on this subject amount to nitpicking, but I won’t. We should do our best to be accurate.
Her attempts to cast doubt on the numbers Lee and Rubio use, though, do not succeed. She ignores the fact that the Lee-Rubio plans lowers payroll-tax as well as income-tax liability, and so she suggests that Lee and Rubio are overestimating how much the plan saves taxpayers when they are just counting the full savings.
Dalmia asks, “why is it so important to Ponnuru—and Rubio-Lee—to declare $200,000 couples as winners under the proposed plan? Because a non-trivial number of losers in the lower end of the $150,000 to $411,500 range would doom the plan politically.”
I disagree with her reading of the politics—I think such a plan might well be able to survive—as I also disagree with her broader claim that reform conservatism and the Lee-Rubio tax plan are facing increasing resistance on the Right. (Actually, support has been surprisingly broad, even if some of the well-wishers have reservations.)
It is “so important” to me to make the point that most people making $200,000 would be winners under the Lee-Rubio plan mainly because it appears to be true, and because I am evaluating a confident assertion by Dalmia to the contrary that is almost certainly false. Again: We have a very strong reason for thinking that many people who earn more than $150,000 a year will save money from this tax-reform proposal. Dalmia has offered no reason, at any point in this exchange, for thinking that people making between $150,000 and $411,500 will all, almost all, or mostly be “losers” from the plan. She has offered no reason for thinking that her new version of the claim—that a non-trivial number of people in the lower end of that range will be losers—is true, either.
Reason’s subhed suggests that I’m avoiding the many “troubling questions” she has raised about reform conservatism. The troubling question I’m left with is whether Dalmia is actually interested in figuring out whether what she writes bears any relation to the truth.