Meanwhile on the other coast, Connecticut lawmakers learned Wednesday that the state’s budget woes may get much worse in 2012, possibly growing to $3.4 billion from the current $385 million, the Associated Press reports.

And state transportation officials in Virginia laid out plans Wednesday to further slash $851.5 million from road-building operations over the next six years — meaning that the state’s six-year road plan has been reduced by $4.6 billion since spring 2008, according to the Virginian-Pilot.

U.S. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders unveiled a health care reform proposal that they said would cover most of the country’s uninsured population and reduce the federal deficit, the New York Times reports.

Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin,” a novel about daring, luck and mortality in 1970s New York, won the fiction prize Wednesday night at the 60th annual National Book Awards, according to the Associated Press.