Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and legislative leaders reached a budget deal Thursday that will cut the state's personal income tax rate by 5 percent over the next four years while giving small increases to school funding.
The tax-cut plan would reduce the state's current 3.4 percent tax rate to 3.3 percent in 2015 and then reduce that to 3.23 percent in 2017.
Pence called it a "great victory." Don't know if I'd go that far, but since he wanted 10 percent, and the initial offers he got in return were 3 percent from the Senate and zilch from the House, I suppose he's entitled to be feeling pretty good about the deal.
And it's also a rare example of actual good coming from a compromise. Usually the deal is reached by people who want to increase spending a certain amount, and the compromise ends up being that they will increase it by a little less. The only thing the taxpayer gets is screwed a little more gently. This compromise actually involved us getting something.
