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Senate Republicans Criticize Road Funding Bill's Tax Changes

Dave Dugdale
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davedugdale/

Senate Republicans have made clear they're not enthusiastic about tax hikes in a House road funding bill. But they're not crazy about a tax cut in the bill either.

House Republicans added a sixth-of-a-point income tax cut to their road funding bill.

Speaker Brian Bosma (R-Indianapolis) acknowledged it was a sweetener to try to win Senate support for the rest of the plan. But it doesn't appear to be working.

Senate President Pro Tem David Long (R-Fort Wayne) says road funding and a tax cut are, in his words, “apples and oranges.”

“I want to take a long, hard look at that and I think the issue of how we pay for our roads and an income tax cut are two separate issues,” Long says.

Long says he'd rather address tax changes in either direction as part of state budget talks next year, when legislators can assess all the state's spending needs and revenue projections.

Senate President Pro Tem David Long says he has the same concern about the tax cut as the tax hikes: he doesn’t want to make fiscal commitments outside the context of the full budget.

“We are going down to one of the lowest income taxes in the country, which I fully support already and while that would make us the lowest – I think – in the country, we want to make sure we can also meet our future needs especially for education,” Long says.

Long notes Indiana's tax rate is already one of the lowest in the country at 3.3-percent, and scheduled to go down again next year to 3.23-percent.

The House's proposed cut to 3.06-percent is what Governor Pence first proposed in 2013 before settling for the smaller cut.

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