Written by Michael Moran on September 29, 2009 – 5:51 am
While New York’s tax and spend habits seem to have the state on a course to fiscal ruin like California, there is a midwest state that may hold a model for reform and recovery, Indiana.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has turned the Hoosier State around since being elected in 2004.
Kimberley A. Strassel looks at Indiana’s success in the Wall Street Journal .
She writes: “The 60-year-old won in 2004 by promising to achieve one goal. “Every successful enterprise has a very clear strategic purpose. . . . So, we said, all right, the strategic purpose of our administration is to raise the net disposable income of Hoosiers,” which has fallen dramatically in recent decades. “Everything else is just a means to that end.”
Mr. Daniels’s first step toward that goal was cleaning up a state balance sheet that 16 years of Democratic rule had left in bad shape. He turned what was a $700 million hole into a $1 billion surplus, making Indiana one of a handful of states that today remain in the black.
How? “Well, prepared to be dazzled,” he says, with his trademark dry wit. “The answer is that we spent less money than we took in.”