COLUMBIA--The Senate gave up on raising taxes to add more money to their version of the budget Thursday night, raising the likelihood that health and education programs around the state will see deep spending cuts in July.

The Senate passed the budget Wednesday, but held onto it in hopes that they'd be able to agree to some form of tax increase before the weekend that they could include in their $5 billion spending plan. When Democrats and Republicans couldn't work out compromises Thursday night, senators gave up on adding money to the budget bill, sending it back to the House $20 million leaner than when it arrived in March.

When the bill hit the floor for debate three weeks ago, objections to portions of it based on Senate rules knocked out about $381 million, raising the urgency for a tax increase of some sort.

"This is the worst budget that the Senate has ever passed," said Senate Democratic Minority Leader John Land, of Manning. "We have let all of the people of South Carolina down. ... We have let every segment of South Carolina government down."

There was "a failure of leadership to bring us together," Land said.

"I don't know how you lead a bunch of obstructionists," said Senate Republican Majority Leader Hugh Leatherman, a Florence lawmaker and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Leatherman said Democrats used "the sorriest strategy that could be developed" to stifle progress on the budget that amounted to political brinksmanship.

They decided to go home because "it appeared to me we were at an absolute impasse," Leatherman said.

In the brinksmanship of this year's Senate budget fight, Leatherman says that the state's most vulnerable citizens lose.

As the Senate took up a bill that would include tax increases, Leatherman pleaded with senators to be mindful of the stakes of not raising taxes to cover Medicaid programs: 6,000 people would lose nursing home care, 12,000 seniors would lose home-based services that keep them out of nursing homes and 66,000 people would be cut from the SilverCard prescription program.

"What will we tell those seniors and their families?" Leatherman asked. "The blood of the poor and the weak will be on our hands."

Paying for Medicaid "is the most

important issue we face this year," said Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greer, as he introduced Gov. Mark Sanford's tax plan to link an income tax reduction to a cigarette tax increase.