Even as Congress slices $38 billion from the current year’s budget and gears up to slash hundreds of billions more from the next, some programs seem impervious to cuts, David A. Fahrenthold says at the Washington Post. He cites four: One spends federal money to store cotton bales. Another offers scholars a chance to study […]

For the first three months of the 112th Congress, freshman Sen. Richard Blumenthal and his staff have had to work out of a dim, no-frills temporary office in the basement of the Senate’s Dirksen Building. But today, the Democratic lawmaker moved up-literally. Blumenthal’s staff spent Wednesday moving and today settling in to spacious new digs […]

A revised budget unveiled Wednesday by Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy restores an array of popular middle-class sales tax exemptions, while increasing inheritance taxes and a levy on expensive cars, boats and jewelry. The revisions, which would trim Malloy’s $1.5 billion tax increase by $116 million and make modest shifts in spending, […]

The Malloy administration and Democratic legislative leaders have reached an agreement on the proposed SustiNet state-run health plan, with a deal that calls for opening the state employee health plan to municipalities and some nonprofits, but not for offering insurance to the public. The agreement would also establish a “SustiNet cabinet” advisory panel within the […]

With a budget agreement in hand, legislative leaders are considering having the General Assembly vote on the tax-and-spending plan without waiting to see if Gov. Dannel P. Malloy succeeds in obtaining the $1 billion in labor savings he is seeking from state employees. A quick vote would leave Malloy with the responsibility for obtaining sufficient […]

Advocates for seniors are fighting a proposal by the Malloy administration that aims to save close to $30 million a year by reducing the amount of assets a person can keep if his or her spouse is in a nursing home and receiving Medicaid coverage. They say the proposal, which would reverse a change made […]

MERIDEN — It is one area where state employee unions and Republicans agree: The ranks of state managers need to be sharply cut. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said today those reductions are coming, but they will not be reflected until the second year of his two-year budget. “There are lots of assumptions built into the […]

The barriers state residents face in reaching the state Department of Social Services are unacceptable, and the options they have for accessing services are “woefully inadequate,” incoming commissioner Roderick L. Bremby told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing. Department workers want to improve the situation, he said, but they’re limited by an obsolete phone system and […]

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, has renewed his push to fix a quirk in the Medicare rules–one that has cost elderly patients thousands of dollars, not to mention considerable stress. Courtney’s efforts began after he was approached by a constituent, Nancy Renshaw, who got stuck with a nearly $10,000 nursing home bill for her father-in-law […]

Support for same-sex marriage seems to have been increasing at an accelerated pace over the past few years, Nate Silver says at the NY Time’s FiveThirtyEight.com, with opponents now in the minority. Tracking dozens of polls going back to 1988–when less than 15 percent said they supported gay marriage–Silver estimates that 50 percent of Americans […]

House Republicans are willing to shell out as much as $500,000 to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that denies key benefits to same-sex couples by defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The law, known as DOMA, is being challenged by a Connecticut couple and other […]

Former longtime state Rep. Cameron Staples has been hired as the executive director of The New England Association of Schools and Colleges. The association is responsible for accrediting public and private school and college programs recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Staples was a state representative for more than 15 years, and was co-chairman […]

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship & Immigration Services to delay the deportation of Mariano Cardoso, a 22-year-old New Britain resident who is one month from finishing his degree at Capitol Community College. Cardoso’s parents entered the United States illegally from Mexico when he was 22 months old, […]