COLUMBIA - The General Assembly will extend its session to finish work on the state budget - at a cost of $75,000 a day - after a last-ditch effort to end on time failed Thursday.

The $5 billion budget has dominated legislators' attention since the session began in January. The Senate alone has spent four weeks fighting on the floor, but ultimately reached no agreement on how to raise more money for state needs.

In a push to meet an end-of-session deadline, a group of six legislators worked from 7 p.m. Wednesday to 7 a.m. Thursday to smooth out differences in the House and Senate proposals.

Their goal was to have the House and Senate approve the joint plan Thursday and send it to Gov. Mark Sanford for the legally required five days' review. Then Sanford could send back his signature or veto by June 5, the end of the legislative session.

As it stands, the compromise budget would:

Use $188 million in federal funds to keep Medicaid spending at this year's level. This would preserve the SilverCard prescription drug program, keep 6,000 people in nursing homes and pay for the CHIPS children's health insurance.

Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, said the lack of progress on health care funding means "people may die," because there's no room for growth on the Medicaid or SilverCard patient rolls.

"People will suffer in a state that's already poor," Neal said.

Set the per-student school spending at $1,701, $500 less than state economists recommend but more than the $1,643 originally proposed by the House.

Some senators voiced strong opposition to items in the joint plan, such as a $25 fee tacked on to every traffic ticket. The $25 million raised in fees would go toward the Department of Corrections, the Department of Juvenile Justice and other public-safety agencies.

The money ended up staying in the budget, but in the hours some senators spent protesting it, others found other items they didn't like.

The sticking points? Most were buried deep in the budget and were incorrectly written, according to precise rules. They include:

Whether Medicaid clients should have to meet stricter eligibility requirements, such as face-to-face interviews, Whether Palmetto Fellows, the college students who receive public money for private schools, should be able to transfer from one school to another, How the Department of Health and Environmental Control would notify legislators if it changed some Medicaid policies.

The Senate opposed these items. The House wants them in. So the joint conference committee will have to return to work Monday and start rewriting the budget.

House leaders said they were stunned the Senate would jeopardize the agreement on big-ticket items, such as education, over relatively minor ones.

House Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell said an extended session could last deep into June.

"The Senate is in a total meltdown," said Harrell, R-Charleston. "The Senate doesn't seem to know what it wants."

Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, acknowledged that the Senate has had a "difficult" month, mostly because it could reach no consensus on whether to raise taxes.

The Senate spent its early budget days debating whether to raise a sales tax to prevent cuts in education and health care. Then senators spent much of the last two weeks on Sanford's proposal to lower the income tax in turn for raising the cigarette tax.

A majority of senators wanted a 53 cent per-pack tax on cigarettes, to offset growth in the Medicaid health care program for the poor and elderly. But some Republicans opposed raising any taxes at all, and Democrats opposed lowering the income tax and taking more money out of the budget, so Sanford's plan died.

"I think the cigarette tax is gone for this year," Leatherman said. "I simply can't see it being revived. The House says we're in meltdown. That's part of what got us there."

Sanford, a Republican, spent much of this spring pushing the proposal, letting other legislative plans fall by the wayside. But spokesman Chris Drummond said the failure of the plan was not a failure for Sanford. Instead, Drummond said the General Assembly plugged a $200 million hole in the Medicaid budget with one-time bailout money approved last week by the Congress. That simply shifts the problem to next year, Drummond said.

"We still haven't resolved a stable funding source for Medicaid," Drummond said. "We haven't seen anything yet that brings growth in South Carolina."

Harrell said that on principle, he doesn't like using one-time money for recurring needs.

But the reality is much different. Sen. Tommy Moore, D-Aiken, said legislators' unwillingness to raise the tax means the state will be in the same mess next year. And the cigarette-tax proposal will be back, but it won't be for 53 cents a pack, Moore said. It will be more like 65 cents.

House Democrats largely opposed the budget compromise, which passed by a vote of 72-37.