Senate Democrats caucus gathered at the state Capitol in Hartford Thursday, touting bills aimed at countering what they said are “rising costs driven by federal Republican policies.”
Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, put affordability on top of the agenda with S.B. 1.
“We'll be looking at income tax reductions under elderly care, allowing for a tax credit for those who are paying the cost of having elder care in their homes,” Looney said.
The list is ambitious for a short session.
“We also want to remove the remaining portion of the tax on social security that we have in Connecticut, to make social security income totally tax free. We know that many, many seniors are struggling in many ways with the costs of aging, the cost of health care,” he said.
Most states, including Massachusetts and New Hampshire, do not tax social security benefits.
Democrats also put forward a push to place safeguards around artificial intelligence products like ChatGPT.
State Sen. James Maroney (D-Milford) pointed to the case of Stein-Erik Soelberg, a Connecticut man who murdered his mother and died by suicide in 2025 after ChatGPT allegedly affirmed his delusions about his mother plotting against him.
“The primary part of this bill is to make sure that we have those protections in place to prevent those tragedies from happening,” Maroney said.
Following the murder, ChatGPT maker Open AI said it planned to introduce safety features to help people in a mental health crisis.
Referring to himself as an “AI optimist,” Maroney said he believed in the good that can come out of AI in health care.
More legislation on the table
State Sen. Matt Lesser (D-Cromwell) said the $1 trillion federal cuts to Medicaid affect health care services for 40% of children, two-thirds of seniors in nursing homes, and people with disabilities in the state.
“How are we going to keep that going? And then also, what are we going to do about the advanced premium tax credits that make health insurance affordable?” he asked.
The health insurance premium tax credits expired at the start of 2026.
State Sen. Derek Slap (D-West Hartford) referred to the bill as “a direct response” to federal legislation that changed the classification of nurses from professional to non-professional, which caps and reduces access to low-interest graduate loans.
“The grad student loan plus program, which in Connecticut, allocates about $90 million a year for our graduate students – future teachers, nurses, mental health clinicians, folks that we need desperately more of in our workforce, it eliminates that program,” he said.
If enacted, Connecticut would be the first state in the country “to react to H.R.1 by creating a statewide grad student loan plus program,” Slap said.
Senate Democrats also called for legislative action to limit private equity firms across multiple sectors in Connecticut.
State Sen. Dr. Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) said private equity-owned health care entities continue to extract money from consumers by increasing the cost of medication and medical tests. “This is criminal,” he said.
State Sen. Herron Keyon Gaston, who represents some of Connecticut’s economically poorest constituents in Bridgeport and Stratford, said, “I can't sleep at night when I think about the affordability crisis that we have before us, when I'm talking to my constituents and they say ‘I got to choose between putting food on the table and getting my prescription medication,’’ he said. “It's real for a lot of people, it's life and it's death.”
Gaston, a pastor, is a son of immigrants who came to the U.S. with roughly $15 in their pockets, he said. They worked on a farm harboring dreams that unlike them, their son would one day go to college.
