The Democrat-controlled state House of Representatives, which caved Friday to Senate pressure to back a new deficit-mitigation plan, likely will cancel its Saturday session to vote on the package now the Gov. M. Jodi Rell has pledged to veto it, House sources said.

As the Senate entered session just before midnight to vote on the package, House sources said that unless all 24 Democrats in the 36-member Senate support the plan -reaching the two-thirds’ margin necessary to override a veto, Saturday’s session would be canceled. And sources in the Senate said no more than 22 of the 24 Democrats there would back the plan, which is not expected to receive any Republican support.

Rell announced late tonight she would veto the plan designed to eliminate this fiscal year’s $518 million deficit and also wipe out about 10 percent of the red ink projected for 2010-11.

The Republican governor said the plan, which boosts taxes on hospitals and cancels a recent tax break for wealthy estates, doesn’t cut spending enough and counts on unreliable funding sources.

“It is woefully short on real spending cuts and burdensomely high on tax increases,” she said.

Keith has spent most of his 31 years as a reporter specializing in state government finances, analyzing such topics as income tax equity, waste in government and the complex funding systems behind Connecticut’s transportation and social services networks. He has been the state finances reporter at CT Mirror since it launched in 2010. Prior to joining CT Mirror Keith was State Capitol bureau chief for The Journal Inquirer of Manchester, a reporter for the Day of New London, and a former contributing writer to The New York Times. Keith is a graduate of and a former journalism instructor at the University of Connecticut.

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