Meltdown. Train wreck. Logjam. Pick your metaphor, but the question is the same:

What's going on in the South Carolina Senate that they can't get a budget approved?

Senators spent four weeks debating the budget, arguing for more money for education and health care but disagreeing on how to raise it -- by an increased cigarette tax, a sales tax or magic bullet.

Finally, senators gave up. They were poised on Thursday to settle on what state Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, called an "ugly baby" of a budget sent over by the House.

But before they'd approve it, senators sent a joint committee back to work, to quibble over four paragraphs in a 500-page budget.

That most likely is going to force a costly extended session, prompting House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bobby Harrell to describe the Senate as being "in meltdown."

Gov. Mark Sanford, whose plan to raise cigarette taxes and reduce income taxes died at Senate hands last week, said the budget train didn't just derail. Several trains collided.

"It's a true frustration," Sanford said.

That frustration has many sources:

• The Senate finds itself with rifts between Republicans and Republicans, Republicans and Democrats, old school and new school. Not to mention a few renegades wanting to kill any plan at any time.

• Senate leaders have written procedural rules that give the majority party more power than in the past. Before, Senate power was based on seniority, not majority rule.

• And the Senate is led by Republicans, just like the House, just like the governor's office. So, it is harder to blame problems on the other party.

Add to that the grim economic times and the tightest budget in modern history.

"It's been just an embarrassing mess," said state Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greenville.

THE THOUGHTFUL CHAMBER

The Senate has long prided itself on being the General Assembly's deliberative body, where everyone has a voice and where consensus carries the day. That's compared to the House, where the leadership gets what the leadership wants.

But Democrats said deliberation has been sacrificed for partisanship since Republicans took over the Senate in 2001. Since then, Democrats said, the Republicans have yet to figure out how to lead and have been handcuffed by their own rules.

The result has been a seemingly different plan every day, but no solution in sight.

It all started with a proposal to raise the sales tax on cars.

Leatherman, the Republican majority leader who chairs the Finance Committee, wanted to pay for schools by eliminating the $300 sales tax cap on cars. The Finance Committee went along, and in so doing, angered one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the state -- car dealers.

The pressure was intense, from car dealers to car buyers to anti-tax advocates. Days later, Leatherman and other Republicans backed down, before the plan made it to the Senate floor.

That left senators trying to write the budget on the fly.

Leatherman did not give up on raising revenue, next pushing a 2-cent sales tax increase. Then he fought for a 53-cent cigarette tax increase, in exchange for Sanford's plan to lower income tax. Finally, he settled for a $25 fee on traffic tickets, to help the public safety budget and prevent further cuts.

Smith, the Greenville Republican, said he admires Leatherman as much as anyone he knows. But you can't lead people who won't follow.

"He did an unbelievably good job to keep his cool," Smith said, "both within the Republican Caucus and with the partisan situation we had on both sides of the aisle."

Leatherman had to deal with 25 Republican senators who wanted different things out of the budget, Smith said. Thirteen of them had signed no-tax pledges, and opposed all of Leatherman's ideas.

Leatherman tried to cobble a coalition of the remaining Republicans and some Democrats for the cigarette tax increase, but Democrats were leery of Sanford's plan.

Said Smith, an advocate for raising the cigarette tax: "All of that together, plus those who have signed the pledge never to raise taxes no matter how bad people are suffering, and those who are absolutely not going to go along with the governor's insistence on the income tax‘ -- I just am depressed about it."

DIVIDED LEADERSHIP

Part of the problem is disagreement among the two most powerful Republican senators -- Leatherman and President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell of Charleston.

McConnell, a master of arcane Senate rules, mentored a renegade group of no-tax Republicans who fought any tax or fee increase.

State Sen. John Kuhn, R-Charleston, said McConnell coached a team on how to filibuster and use Senate rules to stop what they wanted to stop. Kuhn said that team was composed of himself and fellow Republican senators Jake Knotts of Lexington, John Hawkins of Spartanburg and Bill Branton of Dorchester.

Knotts took pride in his "enforcer" role.

"All I know is (Speaker David Wilkins) hugged my neck and said, 'Thank you, Jake, thank you for not sending that cigarette tax.'‘"

Harrell, the House's chief budget writer, sees the meltdown as fission among individuals.

State Sen. Tommy Moore, D-Aiken, bristles at Harrell's use of the word "meltdown."

"If he means having the Senate offer expressions and diverse opinions, then to watch those dynamics is certainly an oddity for him," Moore said. "They don't allow it in the House."

Moore sees the problem as rules instituted by Republicans when they gained power. The Senate went from being led by those with seniority to being led by those in the majority -- by definition, a more partisan approach.

"The Senate has been groaning and moaning to get back to where the institution is more important than partisan politics," Moore said. "We have a ways to go."

NEW DYNAMICS

Former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges sees a problem other than rules. Republicans, who control the House, Senate and governor's office, "no longer have a common enemy," Hodges said, "and that's me."

And today's State House sounds a lot like it did when Democrats controlled the House, Senate and governor's office.

"When you have one party that controls every body, these personal differences tend to show themselves more," Hodges said.

When Republicans took over the Senate in 2001, giving them control of both houses of the General Assembly, Hodges was still in office. Both bodies then could take out their frustrations on the governor, rather than each other.

Losing that focus, Hodges said, "creates a whole new set of dynamics" for the Senate.

That dynamic has a counterpart on the other side of the aisle, as well. When state Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, was asked what the Senate was going to do about the budget, his comeback was half-joking, half-serious.

"What do you mean, 'What are y'all going to do?' I'm not a Republican. They dug this hole, not me."

The repercussions of all this turmoil might be heard most clearly at the ballot box in 2004, said Jack Bass, who has written three books on S.C. politics.

"This year the choice has been between cutting taxes or seriously cutting services, particularly in the field of education, where much of the state's budget goes," said Bass, a professor of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston.

"The big question next year is whether voters decide they would rather have the traditional strong support of public schools, or whether they oppose traditional levels of spending for education."

By way of comparison, Bass said, North Carolina residents voted overwhelmingly to tax themselves for a $3.1 billion bond bill for construction at colleges.

"I question whether South Carolina voters differ much from North Carolina voters in terms of values," he said. "Next year's election in the state may be pivotal."