Their Hour Is Here.

Five Democratic members of the state Senate may hold the power to impose reality on their deluded colleagues.  Senators Robert Duff, Andrew Maynard, Andrew MacDonald, and Edward Meyer could be getting ready to bivouac on Senator Joan Hartley’s island of sanity to force the legislature to confront the state’s growing budget catastrophe.

Even the most cynical denizen of the Capitol village were stunned by Thursday’s budget bazaar in the legislature’s Appropriations Committee that included big budget changes based on unreleased draft reports, reductions in medical care funding, and increases for superfluous legislative committees.  Not only are important public policy issues at stake, but the budget disconnect in this age of discontent is so bad that legislative Republicans threaten to come to life and carry a serious fight into November. Any Republican gains are likely to come in those those 4 districts, which are seen as potentially competitive should the public’s fiscal fever break on November 2nd.

The 4 latecomers and the stalwart Hartley could combine this spring to stop the spending madness and enforce some discipline if mercurial Governor M. Jodi Rell vetoes the nutty plan to increase spending taking shape in the legislature.

We hear that there are similar rumblings among moderate House Democrats, though the pickings are slimmer and the deplete Republican ranks make it more challenging for budget sense to prevail.