COLUMBIA - Gov. Mark Sanford tried to rally support for any kind of tax relief with a gathering on the Statehouse steps Saturday.

The hastily called rally, threatened by thunderstorms and pelting rain earlier in the morning, drew about 60 people, including members of a Republican Party women's group meeting in Columbia, political candidates and their supporters, and members of Sanford's staff and their family members. Some were businesspeople with ties to Sanford.

Monty Felix, chairman of Alaglas Pools, was a member of Sanford's economic development task force and sits on a board set up to oversee how state regulations affect small businesses. He said tax cuts are needed to help spur the economy by encouraging businesses to grow. "This is the challenge to this Legislature: It's about time you got with it," he said.

Sanford says the Legislature plans to spend nearly a billion dollars more in the fiscal year that begins July 1 than it spent in the current fiscal year.

Government "shouldn't grow faster than the growth of people's paychecks and wallets across South Carolina," Sanford said. "We ought to take some of that money and send it back to the taxpayers who are sending money to Columbia in the first place."

After excluding property tax breaks, the current fiscal year's budget totaled $5.8 billion, compared with the $6.6 billion spending plan for the new fiscal year. Three House members and three senators began working out final budget compromises this week and expect to finish next week.

There's still time, Sanford said, to use money from a surging economy to cut taxes. For instance, he says there's enough extra cash to:

-- Give a one-time property tax rebate of $473 to each homeowner and permanently cut the school operating portion of tax bills by nearly two-thirds.

-- Suspend the state's 16.8 cents per gallon gasoline and diesel fuel tax for nearly eight months.

-- Send out tax rebates averaging $660 a family.

-- Lower the state's top income tax rate to 6 percent from 7 percent.

Sanford's rally was an effort to put pressure on House and Senate leaders wrapping up details in the state budget to come up with some type of tax break during the legislative session's last two weeks.

Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom said the state is collecting too much money from taxpayers and ought to give some back.

"The very worst thing that we can do in government is to make excess collections and then shovel that feed into the trough," he said. "You can never satisfy the appetite of a hog. And the worst thing we could do is feed hogs in this state to the point that they become so bloated that they no longer serve any purpose."

It may be too late for Sanford to get what he wants this year. None of his proposals are in the Senate or House versions of the budget. If the budget conference committee embraced them, the Senate and House would each require a two-thirds vote to accept the change.