By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — After five hours of extended debate, partisan sniping, petty niggling and sometimes impassioned, reasoned argument, the House of Representatives approved a revised budget for the current year on a vote of 60-12, virtually identical to the package passed by the finance committee earlier this week.

The budget, which everyone from Gov. Donald Carcieri to legislative leaders to rank-and-file lawmakers said “spread the pain around,” resulted in mid-year cuts in aid to cities and towns, elimination of non-citizen children from the RIte Care health insurance program, the removal of youngsters from welfare cash assistance rolls once their family has been on the program for 60 months, the elimination of hundreds of state jobs and reductions in retiree health benefits.
While there is no specific proposal in the budget to give state workers unpaid furlough days between now and June 30, the budget does reflect $14.8 million in personnel cuts that House leaders say the Carcieri administration must negotiate with state employee unions.
House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino declared that the budget as passed does close a $168 million deficit the state was facing in the current year without raising taxes.
Numerous attempts to amend the proposed supplemental budget for the fiscal year that ends on June 30 — several of which were thinly-veiled attempts to make political points, or force colleagues to cast on-the-record votes about controversial issues — all went down to defeat by varying margins.
The closest Republicans came to forcing a change came with an amendment proposed by Rep. John Loughlin that would have restored $12.5 million cut from aid to cities and towns. Ten million of that was an across-the-board cut in revenue sharing, and the other $2.5 million would be a permanent reduction in the reimbursement municipalities get from the phase-out of the motor vehicle excise tax, from 100 percent of the total levy to 98 percent.
That issue took three votes to finally resolve.
The first vote tabled Loughlin's amendment by an unusually close 35-32 margin. That prompted waves of protest when the electronic roll call machine could not print the names of the voters and how they voted.
GOP Rep. Nicholas Gorham cried foul, saying some members “took a hike” rather than stay in their seats to vote on the measure to reduce the state aid to the communities they represent. House Speaker William Murphy drew laughter and even some applause when he responded: “Rep. Gorham, you are allowed under the rules to take a hike.”
There was enough objection that an hour later, House leaders agreed to take another vote on tabling Loughlin’s amendment. That time it won by a margin of 39-30.
When Loughlin asked near the end of the evening to have that specific article of the budget voted on separately, forcing another roll call and another hour of debate, he lost 47-25.
During the discussion, Loughlin called the cut “shameful. That is something that should not be allowed to happen. And I don’t care if it came from the governor’s office or the finance committee, it’s wrong. We have an opportunity here to correct it and I am asking you to correct it. It’s just not fair to cut out cities and towns in midstream of money that was promised to them.”
Republican Rep. Joseph Amaral of Tiverton asked his colleagues, “What kind of honor do we have as state representatives when we don’t keep our end of the bargain” with cities and towns?
“Promises made, promises kept,” Amaral said, tweaking House Speaker William Murphy and other House leaders, who have used that as a motto since Murphy took the speaker’s rostrum. “To share pain retrospectively is wrong.”
“We are not dumping this on the cities and towns at the last minute,” Pawtucket Rep. Peter Kilmartin, the majority whip, said. “They were on notice about this months ago,” when Gov. Donald Carcieri proposed it as part of his supplemental budget plan. 
Majority Leader Gordon Fox did his best to inspire the troops as the debate wound past the four-hour mark.
Noting that a declining economy has caused problems in states nationwide, Fox told his colleagues, “You, ladies and gentleman are where the rubber meets the road. If we don’t have (the money) to give, we can not give it” to the cities and towns.
“Now we can all hide because we are afraid of retribution at the polls, that someone may get unelected. But you know what? In response to the needs of the time, this representative is willing to sacrifice my seat if that’s what’s needed. Because the state of Rhode Island can not afford higher taxes. Whether you want to agree with that or not, it is a fact.”
Referring to the numerous cuts in social programs, Fox said of the municipal aid reduction, “This is the least egregious cut you are going to make tonight.” He pointed out that the Historic Tax Credit program he helped create is “ended, cancelled, gone,” because the state can no longer afford it.
He told the chamber to, in effect, get used to the idea of cuts. The supplemental budget, Fox said, is a “stage setter” for the 2009 budget, which the House will likely vote on sometime in June.
He said, “’09 is not going to get any prettier, ladies and gentlemen out there, so do the right thing and start tightening you belts right now.”
The only successful change to the budget passed by the finance panel added about $50,000 to fix what was called an inadvertent cut of annuities to widows and widowers of firefighters and police who die in the line of duty, and tuition assistance for their children. Costantino said the governor’s office asked that the cut be restored when it learned that it had been included.
The supplemental budget package now goes to the Senate.