Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Tuesday that the state budget deficit swelled to nearly $922 million, after quarterly estimates for income tax payments fell severely short of projections. The most recent estimated income tax payments came in at 20 percent below expectations, a trend, according to the Office of Policy and Management, that will total to two-thirds of a billion dollars of lost tax revenue at the end of the year. “The last three months of 2008 — the job losses, the slump in sales, the concern in the eyes of Connecticut’s working men and women — have been an extraordinarily difficult time,” Rell said in a statement. “State government must be limited, especially in times such as these, by what the people who pay its bills can afford.”

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