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Albany -- Breaking his silence on the details of state budget talks, Gov. George Pataki said yesterday that the three-year tax cut and the welfare-reform package that he has negotiated will put New York well on its way to the kind of "sweeping change" he promised during last year's campaign.
In a telephone interview, Pataki said budget talks could be wrapped up this week. Under his agreements so far with the Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats, he said, the state's top tax rate would be dropped to its lowest level since 1953, and state spending would decline for the first time since 1943.
"We're going to achieve the three critical principles we've talked about from the start," he said. "We'll spend less than last year, we'll cut tax 25 percent for 70 percent of...