HARTFORD, Conn. -- Gov. Jodi Rell said she will use her line-item veto power to comb through a budget approved by the General Assembly early Tuesday morning.

The bill passed the Democrat-controlled House on a 103-45 vote at about midnight. All House Republicans voted in opposition of the bill, joined by nine Democrats. The Democrat-controlled Senate passed it 22-13 early after 2 a.m. Tuesday, with one Democrat voting with the opposing GOP.

Rell said she will not sign the budget because she doesn't agree with it, but that she will not veto it.

She said the budget would take effect in five days without her signature.

Democratic leaders called the $37.6 billion tax and spending plan "a balanced approach" to closing the state's budget deficit and ending a months-long impasse with the Republican governor that has dragged two months into the new fiscal year.

Rell said Tuesday that she will use her line-item veto to eliminate about $8 million in what she called pork projects.

Rell criticized the budget as calling for more borrowing and vague plans for future spending.

"I do not believe in this budget," Rell said. "I will not sign it into law because I do not believe in this budget. I do not want, by my signature, to put a stamp of approval on their spending, their inability to make cuts or their levels of borrowing, revenues and taxes."

But the governor said she would allow the measure to become law because Connecticut residents were feeling the effects of the budget stalemate.

"This budget is not the compromise I sought," she said. Connecticut has been without a budget since the July 1 beginning of the fiscal year. When the budget takes affect Sunday, only Pennsylvania will be without a spending agreement amid the economic recession if that state, too, has not reached a resolution.

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