As predicted, some of the most consequential — and difficult — decisions lawmakers faced during the Maryland General Assembly’s 90-day legislative session, which concluded Monday night, focused on taxes and spending. Facing a $3.3 billion deficit and worsening economic uncertainty as the federal government’s upheaval/layoffs/cuts continue under the Trump administration, state legislators had to do what politicians hate most: Say no. “No” not just to unwise tax increases but to counterproductive budget cuts.

And in the end, they passed with just hours left in the session a $67 billion budget that likely has something for most everyone to hate. But here’s what it has, perhaps most important of all: In a sea of political turmoil, it offers an island of rationality. This is a budget that not only comes out balanced but is prepared for the worst with $2.4 billion in cash reserves, most of it in what is known as the Rainy Day Fund. It isn’t a savings account (as much as a previous administration might portray such a balance), it’s more like an insurance policy and a way to retain the state’s prized triple-A credit rating.

Gov. Wes Moore clearly understands the yin and yang of Annapolis. In a meeting with The Baltimore Sun Editorial Board on Monday he expressed disappointment that one of the goals of the budget he submitted to lawmakers, an income tax reduction for the middle class, was greatly diluted — from perhaps $173 to $43 per person — but still cast the modest change as a victory. “I think people appreciate the fact that” they will be getting “something back,” Moore noted, “at a time when everything else is kind of falling in.”

And the governor recognizes, too, that the budget is filled with such half-wins, half-losses. Keeping the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reforms more or less on track is clearly a victory as the state seeks to improve student outcomes, while reductions to the developmental disability budget, although not as great as first proposed, are still going to sting for those who require much-needed health services.

Here’s a few more half-measures: State employees will receive only a modest 1% cost-of-living adjustment, Baltimore’s proposed east-west Red Line transit project stays alive but there’s not enough money to build it. And The Child Victims Act, hailed as a groundbreaking victory for those who suffered child sexual abuse when Governor Moore signed it into law two years ago, will have its cap on restitution downsized so public agencies can afford what some now fear will amount to billions of dollars in payouts.

Will average Marylanders understand these budget realities as they pay a 3% tax on information technology services or software publishing — an especially tough pill to swallow as Maryland seeks to improve its tech economy? Or when high-earners pay a slightly higher income tax? Or when the Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program fee is doubled or when motorists pay $5 more for a new tire? Most people don’t have the time to follow events in the State House. They have their own household budgets to balance. Or perhaps they are far more focused (and worried) about what’s coming next from President Donald Trump as the stock market continues its wild tariff-driven ride.

Politicians will spin, of course. Although their numbers are relatively small, Republican leaders in the House of Delegates and State Senate are already revving up their RPM with claims that the state’s budget needs could easily have been met entirely with spending cuts instead of the mix of $2 billion in spending cuts and $1.6 billion in higher taxes and revenue shifts. This sort of sloganeering doesn’t pass the smell test — not to anyone with experience in the public sector, which Marylanders have in abundance (although perhaps less by the day as federal layoffs continue).

And so we would offer that the best thing to be said about Maryland’s budget compromise is this: It is rational, it was done carefully and openly, and it asks for the most sacrifice from those who can best afford it. That doesn’t make much of a bumper sticker for next year’s state elections but it has the advantage of being truthful. And doesn’t a little more caution and a little less chainsaw-wielding and tariff-threatening by elected officials at any level of government sound pretty good right now?