by Donald Eng
HARTFORD, CT — After 12 hours of debate and a series of failed Republican amendments, the Connecticut Senate approved a new, two-year state budget for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, unchanged from the one it received Monday night from the House. The budget is the result of a deal negotiated by legislative leaders and Gov. Ned Lamont.
It passed on a 25-11 party-line vote.
During the debate, which began early Tuesday afternoon and ended just before midnight, a series of Republican senators commented on the budget and peppered Sens. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, and John Fonfara, D-Hartford, with questions. Osten co-chairs the Appropriations Committee and Fonfara the Finance Committee. A handful of Democrats also took the floor to comment positively.
State Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, answers a question about the state budget on June 3, 2025. Credit: Donald Eng / CTNewsJunkie
State Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, the Senate’s ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said the bill the Senate debated bore little resemblance to the one that passed out of committee.
“You do all this work. You work with the subcommittees … but at the end of the day, that budget is taken and it’s put into some kind of blender in which many of us have no say,” she said. “So this document that came out looks very different than what came out of appropriations.”
Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, the Senate’s ranking member on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, said the budget “puts the economic future of our state in greater jeopardy than it is now.”
Fazio, during his nearly two hours of comments, proposed a pair of amendments. The first mandated that the Office of Fiscal Analysis summarize how fiscal policy changes would affect long-term savings, bonded debt, and pension debt.
State Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, asks a question during debate on the state budget on June 3, 2025. Credit: Donald Eng / CTNewsJunkie
The amendment failed in a 25-11 party-line vote.
Fazio later introduced a second amendment, reducing the Medicaid expenditures by about $116 million over two years and dedicating that money toward a middle-class tax cut. The savings would come from eliminating health care coverage for undocumented immigrants.
“Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on that, over the long run, I don’t think is fair to regular, middle-class people,” he said.
Osten, in response, pointed out that hospitals were required to treat people who came in regardless of their immigration status.
“And I don’t see in this amendment an accounting for what the hospitals would do should someone go to the hospital,” she said. “The uncompensated care then goes on the backs of all people who use a hospital system. And every hospital I’ve ever talked to said they’re not allowed to turn someone away, and I’m not certain I want to make it law that they have to turn someone away who is in a crisis situation.”
That amendment failed 25-10 with Somers listed as absent or not voting. In all, Republicans offered six amendments and all failed by similar margins.
State Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, asks a question during debate on the state budget on June 3, 2025. Credit: Donald Eng / CTNewsJunkie
In his comments, Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, called the budget “693 pages of mind-numbing, eye-exhausting reading” and made a plea for his colleagues to remember to recycle all the paper that the budget had generated.
Hwang, paraphrasing a critique of the budget from the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said the budget “prioritizes short-term programs over long-term stability” and asked Osten to confirm the analysis was correct.
Osten replied that CBIA had made a number of requests, including workforce development and increased housing, that the budget addresses.
“As much as I respect CBIA … I do think that we have to pay attention to what we’re funding and make sure that we are covering those costs,” she said.
Democrat Saud Anwar of South Windsor, in his brief remarks, said the goal was to make the best document possible.
“Budgets are moral documents,” he said. “These are documents where we vote based on our values and our priorities. When we are funding programs … we are actually funding hope for our communities.”
The priorities in the budget give hope, opportunity, and dignity to residents, he said.
In a statement before the Senate began debate on the budget Tuesday, Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said the budget “has no new taxes, reduces costs, maintains fiscal responsibility, and makes transformative investments in child care and public education.”
The two contrasted the state budget with the actions of Republicans in the US Congress, who they said were pushing “a gimmick-laden budget that undercuts support for working families to fund windfalls for the ultra-wealthy.”
The two noted that the Democratic budget pays down debt and expands access to child care.
“We deliver record education aid to towns instead of dismantling the Department of Education. And we provide tax relief to lower-income working families, not billionaires,” they wrote. “The contrast could not be more stark.”
Democrats hold a 25-11 edge in the Senate and therefore had the votes to pass the package without any Republican support.
In his own statement, Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, summed up the budget plan as “gimmicks. Tax hikes. Dead bills getting brought back to life.”
Lamont, who is expected to sign the bill after negotiating the details with legislative Democrats, had “folded like a lawn chair,” Harding said.
“Fiscal moderation has officially left the state Capitol,” Harding said. “The governor and Connecticut Democrats have succeeded in protecting government bureaucracy.”
Lamont’s office released a statement on the budget from the governor shortly after Senate passage, describing it as a balanced, sensible budget that is under the spending cap, provides predictability and stability for residents, businesses, and municipalities, and holds the line on taxes while keeping us on a sound fiscal path.
“Importantly, it includes significant investments in our education system, beginning with historic levels of support for early childhood education, up through our K-12 public schools and our higher education institutions. It also protects our social services safety net, prioritizing our health and human services providers and increasing support for our most vulnerable residents, including seniors and those who have disabilities, who receive Medicaid.”
He continued: “And while we are doing all of this, we are continuing to make historic and long-overdue payments into the pension system, preserve the strength of our fiscal guardrails, and make fiscally responsible investments into the rainy day fund that will protect our state against any potential economic headwinds we may face in the future. While other states are increasing taxes and cutting services, economic analysts are pointing to Connecticut as an example of a state that has worked hard to maintain fiscal stability and make the smart decisions that are critical for economic growth.”
According to the Office of Fiscal Analysis, the budget, introduced as House Bill 7287, appropriates $27.1 billion in the 2026 fiscal year and $28.6 billion in 2027. The OFA estimated the budget would be $900,000 under the spending cap in 2026 and $75.2 million under the cap in 2027.
Some of the items in the bill include increases to Medicaid funding and the distribution of $250 checks to all Earned Income Tax Credit-eligible households with a child, about 85,000 households in all.
The budget bill includes other items, including the Shield Act, which protects healthcare providers and recipients from liability from another state after lawfully engaging in reproductive or gender-affirming care in Connecticut.
The budget also includes components of Senate Bill 7, a healthcare bill that passed the House and Senate and includes other broad protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care, as well as emergency services, opioid response efforts, and public health infrastructure.
The version that passed the House, however, did not include language establishing safe injection sites where people could safely inject drugs. The final version of the legislation that was added to the budget bill also did not include such language.