Legislator: My staff conducted a poll in which my constituents were asked whether they favor high taxes. More than 9...

Samantha-Alexis on July 7, 2019

Can you please explain how is answer choice B better than answer choice E?

shunhe on December 31, 2019

Hi @Steph and @Samantha-Alexis,

The legislator claims that because constituents don't favor high taxes, they would support a bill the legislator introduced that lowers the corporate income tax. The question asks us to find the best criticism of the argument; two branches of attack immediately come to mind. The first is that because it decreases the corporate income tax, most regular consumers (the majority of the legislator's constituents) won't be affected by it, and reducing the corporate income tax may cause a budget shortfall that has to be made up for by increasing sales taxes or personal income taxes. Two, there's no indication as to how high the corporate income tax currently is. perhaps people already think it's quite low, and so wouldn't want to reduce it any further. We can see that (B) matches up with this second branch of thinking, and so (B) is correct.

(A) is incorrect because the opinions of the rest of the country as a whole is irrelevant, as the legislator's claims only concern her constituents.

(C) is incorrect because the legislator isn't basing the support for the bill on the absence of opposition to the bill. She bases the support for the bill on a survey that asks about high taxes, which is another problem.

(D) is incorrect because it essentially states that the legislator makes a circular argument, which she doesn't. She believes people will support the bill, not because they'll support the bill (a circular argument), but because they oppose high taxes as evidenced by the survey.

(E) is incorrect because the result doesn't prove the public supports the bill (as discussed in the explanation of (B)), nor does the legislator treat it as a result that merely shows consistency with public support; the legislator clearly states that her constituents would support it. Hope this helps!