“A rallying cry for relief” is how Rep. Anthony Weiner described the report out this week from the city’s Independent Budget Office comparing New York City’s state and local tax burden with that of the country’s eight other largest cities. The congressman was talking of neither Rolaids nor Mariano Rivera; the report found that New York City’s state and local tax burden was by far the highest. Immediately Mr. Weiner of the Democratic Party and Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City, a business group, started sparring over how to structure tax cuts. Mr. Weiner favors tax cuts aimed at middle-class taxpaying individuals, while Ms. Wylde supports tax cuts for businesses.

Our own preference is for marginal tax cuts — that is, tax cuts on the next dollar earned — for both businesses and individuals. These are the kinds of tax cuts that increase incentives to work, to earn, to create wealth. The great lesson of the Reagan years — and, incidentally, of the years of George W. Bush’s presidency — is that these are the kinds of tax cuts that produce jobs and economic expansion and, importantly, greater tax revenues. The same goes for tax cuts on capital gains. These are principles that need to be stated and restated in a debate that no doubt is going to be heated and protracted, a point on which we are reminded by the fact that the latest report is not the first to warn of the excessively high burden on our city and state.