At the April 9 Lubick Symposium honoring Tax Policy Center co-founder Len Burman, three panels returned to questions that have shaped his work for decades: What should the tax code try to achieve? Where does it work well, where does it fall short, and how much complexity should policymakers tolerate in pursuit of fairness, efficiency, and political viability?
The subjects differed, but the themes overlapped. Whether discussing family tax credits, capital income, or federal debt, panelists kept circling the same tensions: targeting versus universality, simplicity versus precision, and analytical elegance versus political reality. You can watch the full symposium, including closing remarks from Len Burman, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) here.
Tax credits for families remain popular, even as panelists stress different goals
In the first panel, moderated by Elaine Maag, there was little doubt that the earned income tax credit (EITC) and child tax credit (CTC) remain central tools for supporting low- and moderate-income families. Maag noted that for families with children below poverty, about 22 percent of annual income comes through those credits, usually as a lump-sum refund rather than help spread across the year.
But panelists differed in their assessments of the credits. Isabel Sawhill, Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution, argued that the current CTC is “so badly targeted,” noting that “only 8 percent of the money goes to children in the bottom quintile,” while the EITC is “a far, far more cost-effective way of reducing poverty.”
Josh McCabe, Director of Social Policy at the Niskanen Center, put more emphasis on the CTC as a broad family benefit: “You have a kid, your boss doesn’t give you a raise. Kids are expensive.”
Jacob Bastian, Assistant Professor of Economics at Rutgers University and TPC Nonresident Senior Fellow, praised the refundability of the EITC and its tie to “that first dollar of earnings.” But he also warned against making too much support contingent on work alone. In his view, “it’s okay for us not to condition everything on work,” so long as policy combines work incentives with “a minimum standard of living.”
The ensuing discussion explored how best these credits can best support families. Maag favored monthly delivery of the CTC. Bastian wanted “the best of both worlds,” combining periodic payments with some lump-sum refund. And Sawhill, McCabe, and Bastian all showed interest in separating today’s patchwork into a clearer worker credit and child credit, though for somewhat different reasons, including wage support, simplicity, and political viability.
There was also broad concern about administration. Sawhill stressed simplification, McCabe warned that improper-payment concerns could stall reform, and Bastian noted that the EITC’s low official administrative costs can mask the burden shifted onto families who pay preparers.
On the taxation of capital income, panelists agreed that design matters
The capital-income panel, moderated by TPC’s Rob McClelland, began with a point of broad agreement: If policymakers want to tax very high-income households effectively, they cannot avoid capital income.
Jane Gravelle, Senior Specialist in Economic Policy with the Congressional Research Service, put it most directly: “if you don’t tax capital income, you can’t tax rich people.” Kyle Pomerleau, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, emphasized that any tax system must raise revenue in a way that is “efficient” and “perceived as fair,” while Lily Batchelder, Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation at the New York University School of Law, argued that in many parts of capital taxation, fairness, efficiency, and revenue are not in conflict at all.
That theme shaped the rest of the discussion. Batchelder pointed to stepped-up basis and the realization rule as provisions that both lower effective tax rates and distort investment, pushing money into assets held “purely for tax reasons.”
Gravelle agreed that there is always a tradeoff between “the size of the pie and the distribution of pie,” but she also argued that the efficiency costs of taxing capital are often overstated. On investment, she offered a pointed corrective: “as a tool for trying to increase national savings and national investment, taxes are not at the top of the list.”
Pomerleau suggested that if policymakers want more investment, entity-level incentives such as depreciation rules or investment credits may matter more than lower household-level capital gains taxes.
The discussion narrowed further around design choices. Batchelder said capital taxation should play a “very, very large” role in addressing inequality because at the top of the income scale, so much income takes the form of capital gains and unrealized appreciation.
But Pomerleau cautioned that proposals aimed only at the ultra-wealthy can become so complex that their case weakens. Gravelle and Batchelder also drew attention to trusts and estate-tax loopholes. Batchelder said “there are trillions of dollars that we don’t even know are there,” while Gravelle pointed to mechanisms that let very wealthy families avoid much transfer taxation altogether.
The overall message was clear: Debates over capital taxation are not only about rates, but about whether policymakers will confront the preferences, deferrals, and estate-planning devices that make the system less coherent.
On debt, panelists differed more on framing than solutions
The final panel, moderated by Jessica Riedl, Budget and Tax Fellow with TPC and the Brookings Institution, showed that concerns about debt are real across the spectrum, but sensitivities to risk seemed to vary.
Louise Sheiner, Senior Fellow with the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, pushed back on terms like “fiscal crisis” and “catastrophic,” arguing that debt is better understood as “a transfer from future generations to current generations” and “a slow, moving, gradual erosion of future living standards.” In her view, the bigger risks may be political: weakening the Federal Reserve, statistical agencies, or the rule of law.
Bill Gale, Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy, Economic Studies Program, Brookings Institution and TPC Senior Fellow, struck a similar tone. The budget debate, he argued, “should not be a debate about bean counting,” but about “what should the government be doing, and then how should we pay for it?”
That led him to defend both fiscal sustainability and a more active public role, including “investing in kids, strengthening the safety net, better health insurance, better automatic stabilizers, better public investment.” He later described the debt problem as “termites in the woodwork versus wolves at the door.”
Mark Goldwein, Senior Vice President and Senior Policy Director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, accepted more of the crisis framing, but he too emphasized policy specifics over slogans. “The ratio of spending to revenue doesn’t matter at all,” he said. “What matters is the specifics of the policies.”
Still, he warned that if debt keeps rising while interest rates stay above growth, the country could enter a debt spiral, with markets “both forward looking and incredibly stupid and panicky at the same time.”
Even here, though, the disagreement was not absolute. Sheiner said she did not really reject those scenarios, only that the runway to them is long. Goldwein, for his part, warned that a drawn-out “gradual crisis” could ultimately be “more devastating” than a sudden one.
Taken together, the symposium reflected one of Burman’s analytical legacies: treating tax policy not as an isolated technical exercise, but as a way to ask larger questions about efficiency, fairness, evidence, and democratic choice. The panelists did not always agree, but they shared a discipline that is in short supply in today’s debate: Define the goal, follow the evidence, and do not confuse tidy theory with workable policy.
