We don't know how the Republicans' newly minted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will fare in Congress, but we know this much. It deserves a fair hearing.
By that, we mean it warrants consideration for what it is, not for what it is not.
Days before the proposal was released on Thursday morning, Senate Democrats were lying about it. There's just no other way to put it. They were intentionally misrepresenting what the plan would do.
It took the Washington Post, a newspaper as politically left-leaning as each of the senators, to call them on their words.
The newspaper's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, gave Democrats four Pinocchios - reserved for claims that are referred to as "whoppers" - for their misrepresentations.
"In their haste to condemn the GOP tax plan," he wrote, "Democrats have spread far and wide the false claim that families making less than $86,100 on average will face a hefty tax hike. Actually, it's the opposite."
Most families in that income range, Kessler wrote, would be due a tax cut. He noted that Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Jeff Merkley of Oregon all had tweeted that families making up to $86,100 would on average see a tax increase of $794.
In fact, he said, even using the data Democrats did in making their argument, taxpayers in each income band would be entitled to a tax cut, and the average cut would be $450 for 80 percent of families.
"Any Democrat who spread [the erroneous] claim should delete their tweets and make clear they were in error," Kessler wrote.
The tax cut, as announced Thursday, would amount to $1.51 trillion over 10 years. It would mean a $1,182 tax cut to a family of four earning $59,000.
Although tax writers said the bill was still a work in progress, its attributes include simplifying the number of income brackets from seven to four, slicing the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, raising the child tax credit from $1,000 to $1,600 and adding a new credit for non-child family members.
Unlike previous working versions of the measure, it keeps the tax rate on millionaires where it was (39.6 percent), does not eliminate the mortgage interest deduction (but caps it at $500,000 for new homes) and does not eliminate the deduction for state and local property taxes (up to $10,000).
Of course, there will be a lot more to learn about the plan, especially as more details are added and costs fleshed out, but American taxpayers deserve to hear the truth about it, not spin.
Otherwise, such discourse only adds to the cynicism Americans already have about their government.