Following an unsuccessful attempt by Republicans earlier today to cut state spending and save for the impending recession, Senate Democrats pushed through a $17.6 billion budget that critics said bloats the bureaucracy, continues to neglect transportation and leans hard on taxpayers.

Republican senators started off the day with a tentative agreement with Democrats to make at least $15 million in budget cuts and hold the difference in reserve to weather the coming economic downturn. Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter stepped in to scuttle that deal at the last moment, however, so Republicans pressed on during today's budget debate in a bid to implement the cuts on their own through budget amendments.

The GOP also unleashed another salvo of budget amendments intended to check the Ritter administration's controversial imposition of a statewide property-tax hike last year as well as administration policies expanding organized labor's hold on state personnel.

Most of the amendments failed on party-line votes at the behest of ruling Democrats, with one especially notable exception. A proposal by Republican Sen. Tom Wiens, of Castle Rock, diverted $150,000 that was  originally budgeted for the administration's legal defense against a lawsuit over the property-tax hike, and allocated it to wildfire mitigation. Several Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans and pass it.

"We were disappointed but not surprised that we weren't able to pass more of the cuts we had proposed," said Senate GOP leader Andy McElhany, of Colorado Springs. 

Indignant Senate Republicans stopped a Democrat attempt today to boost the State Board of Education's expense budget, which had been downsized amid controversy over the board's free-spending ways.

The GOP members said the bid by veteran Democrat Sen. Sue Windels--who wanted to take $36,500 from community colleges to cover state board members' expense accounts--was a slap at taxpayers following news reports about the board's outlandish expenditures on dinner, hotels and travel.

The Associated Press uncovered lavish board spending that included expensive meals, themed catering and valet parking, prompting the legislature's powerful Joint Budget Committee to cut the board's budget last month by $44,000.

"The budget committee uncovered what I think is waste, fraud and abuse in this budget," Republican Sen. Steve Johnson, of Fort Collins, told fellow senators in this morning's debate on the state budget.

Johnson, who sits on the budget committee, said the cut was justifiable in the face of "embarrassing" expenditures by some board members, and he chastised Windels for downplaying the concerns.

"This wasn't a sensational newspaper story," he said. "This was about a $2,000 dinner bill that the taxpayers of this state paid for, at the most expensive restaurant in Telluride. This is about a $160 limo ride that the taxpayers in my district paid for so that somebody on the board could go shopping at a mall in Washington, D.C."

GOP senators who worked all Tuesday with Democrats on a plan to cut millions of dollars from the pending state budget--with hopes of banking the savings for the coming economic downturn--were stunned this morning after learning Gov. Bill Ritter lowered the boom on the compromise.

"It's extremely disappointing," said Sen. Josh Penry, a Grand Junction Republican who had helped negotiate the scuttled deal. Penry, addressing fellow GOP senators just before the Senate convened, chided the governor for failing "to prepare for what we know is an inevitable recession."

Fort Collins Republican Sen. Steve Johnson, who serves on the powerful Joint Budget Committee, bemoaned the collapse of the bipartisan agreement under pressure from a governor who, "wants to spend all this money and not save any for the future."

Added Sen. Scott Renfroe, an Eaton Republican who also helped drive the negotiations, "It's always easy to say we're going to create a rainy day fund, but to put the money in the fund is where we never come together."

The lawmakers had made considerable progress toward the budget breakthrough before being short-circuited in the effort, having agreed with Democrat Senate leaders on some $15 million in cuts.