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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Three more states prepared to join the parade of income tax cutters as the New York City

Transit Union blocks a plan to rearrange subway schedules for post-COVID traffic patterns.

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.

We are joined today by my colleague on the editorial board,

Manet Uquibru, welcome to you, Manet.

The remarkable run for state tax cutters over the past few years is only getting more

remarkable. It seems. Let's start with West Virginia, where the state has recently passed a

tax cut plan that doesn't go quite as far as the original proposed by Governor Jim Justice,

but still seems to step forward for the state's business climate and certainly personal

pocketbooks. So Manet, give us a sense of what the governor proposed there and what the state

legislature ultimately has enacted. Yes, so the final version which has come out of a compromise,

which I'll get to in a bit, is going to reduce the top rate on income taxes from 6.5% today to 5.12%,

so about a 20% reduction. And that goes quite a long way because if you look at the states in

West Virginia's neighborhood, all of them are well below 6%, or rather I believe Virginia is close

to that at 5.75, but some of the other bordering states, Maryland, etc., have lower rates than

West Virginia. And so this is about competing, about making sure that the playing field stays

competitive for West Virginia's business climate. Jim Justice, as you mentioned, the governor of

West Virginia had originally wanted to go a bit further. The plan that he proposed and which was

...