The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a $51.1 billion biennial budget early Tuesday morning that features a broad-based state income tax cut and dramatically boosts funding to local school districts. The package, which passed 139-12 with strong bipartisan support following a nearly three-hour debate that began late Monday, now heads to the Senate, which also is expected to approve the budget before the regular 2023 legislative session adjourns at midnight Wednesday. “We think there’s lot of good things in there,” House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said of the overall budget, which negotiators for the legislature and Lamont administration finished crafting this past weekend. “Look, do I wish we could spend a couple of hundred million dollars more? Yes, I do. I think that’s where our caucus was,” Ritter said. But he quickly added that would have forced a much larger effort to work around the spending cap and praised Democrats for compromising on this issue to ensure support from Lamont, other fiscally moderate Democrats and the GOP.
