COLUMBIA--Senate Democrats delayed passage of a redistricting bill to make it unlikely the GOP-favored plan will get approval in the House this year.

After two days of delays and filibustering, the Senate redistricting bill received approval on second reading Wednesday. But final passage of the bill was set for Friday -- after the deadline to get Senate-passed bills considered without a two-thirds vote of the House.

Many Democrats do not want to change district lines. House Minority Leader James Smith said it's more important to pass a sound budget.

"We will oppose taking this bill up," said Smith, D-Columbia. "It simply is inconsistent with what our duties and obligations are."

House and Senate district lines typically are redrawn every 10 years to update with new census population data.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a plan in 2001 that was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges. Lawmakers failed to override the veto, prompting a month-long trial that cost taxpayers $1 million in legal fees. A federal court threw out the lawmakers' plan and drew its own maps.

All 124 members of the House of Representatives ran on the court-ordered plan in 2002. But the 46 senators are not up for re-election until next year, and Republican leaders in the Senate want to create their own maps, saying the court's lines divide too many precincts.

The court plan splits 130 precincts in one or more districts. The Senate plan splits no precincts, said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell.

Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Hopkins, used Senate rules to delay a vote Tuesday, and he attempted to block the bill again Wednesday through a technicality. When his objection was overruled, Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, spread out paperwork and maps to begin his filibuster.

Jackson said it's too expensive to go through the process during the current budget crisis. Senators should focus on debating the state's $5.2 billion state budget, which was on the calendar behind the reapportionment bill, he said.

"The budget is more important than drawing our individual lines," Jackson said.

Wednesday's agreement clears the way for the Senate to take up the budget.

Senate Finance Committee Chair-man Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, said he could bring up the budget today, but that debate likely would not begin until Tuesday.

Meanwhile, senators agreed not to give the reapportionment bill third reading until Friday.

"There are some folks over in the House ... who are nervous Nellies about it and want to make sure it doesn't get there by May 1, so this way it guarantees that it doesn't," said McConnell, R-Charleston. "But it doesn't amount to a hill of beans because it is impossible to be there before May 1."

Because the General Assembly is in the first year of a two-year session, bills that miss the deadline can be revived when the Legislature reconvenes next year.

Other items that did not make it across the aisle before the deadline:

-- Gov. Mark Sanford's proposal to cap school enrollment at all public schools: no more than 500 children in elementary schools, 700 in middle schools and 900 in high schools. The bill got stuck in a House committee.

-- Sanford's education initiative to include "conduct" grades on student report cards. The bill got stuck in a House committee.

-- A minibottle bill, which would allow bars to free-pour liquor. The bill got stuck in the Senate behind the reapportionment and budget bills.

-- A bill that would require all of South Carolina's 46 counties to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a county holiday. The House adjourned debate on it Wednesday.

-- A bill calling for the construction of a monument outside the Statehouse memorializing "unborn children who have given their lives because of legal abortion." The bill got stuck in a House subcommittee.

-- A bill that would require all straws handed out in restaurants to have wrappers.