AUGUSTA (AP) – After hours of stubborn debate, Democratic majorities in the Maine House of Representatives and Senate succeeded Friday in enacting the budget-balancing package they preferred over the determined demands of a Republican minority.

Baldacci signed the measure right away. The partisan battle, however, was not immediately concluded.

Infuriating GOP lawmakers who knew it was coming, Democrats flexed their muscle further by adjourning this year’s regular session of the Legislature. Under the Democratic plan, lawmakers won’t actually pack up and go home, but will instead reconvene in special session Tuesday – a difference with mostly technical ramifications.

But by closing out the regular session, the Democrats start a 90-day clock ticking so that at the end of that time the budget package they had enacted would finally take effect.

Two-thirds House and Senate majorities would have been needed to put new money-saving budget provisions into effect immediately. But unhappy Republicans, objecting to key portions of the Democratic plan, withheld their support. As the two sides feuded into the night, Republicans challenged the Democratic adjournment strategy right up to the end.

Numerous GOP lawmakers, seeking to dramatize their contention that an adjourn-and-reconvene gambit was improper, said they wanted to insist on taking premium pay for duty during the contemplated special session and donate it to charity or groups that had been subjected to budget cuts.

Sen. Richard Bennett, R-Norway, called the Democrats’ simple-majority enactment tactic “the true violation of the spirit of the constitution.”

Democratic leaders countered by producing a resolution that sought to prevent lawmakers from receiving increased compensation over the coming two or three months, when they would have expected to be working anyway.

Tempers already inflamed by the budget debate rose as the procedural wrangling dragged on. When the House and Senate adjournments came, lawmakers streamed from the State House for a delayed weekend.

House Majority Leader John Richardson, D-Brunswick, suggested that the dispute over parliamentary process, like the budget dispute itself, reflected “an honest philosophical difference” between the two parties.

Noting that lawmakers still face more budget-balancing, negotiations over tax relief and a bond package, “if that’s something that’s still possible,” Richardson expressed hope that legislators could put hard feelings aside.

House Minority Leader Joe Bruno, R-Raymond, indicated that approach would not be easy for some.

Saying the circumstances surrounding adjournment undercut the notion of let-bygones-be-bygones, Bruno added: “Mr. Chief Executive, I hope your listening.”

A central target of Republican ire over the budget package was the Democrats’ proposal of a tax-and-match provision designed to net more federal funding for the state by assessing a new levy on hospitals and leveraging the additional revenue to obtain a greater federal match.

Also drawing strong Republican criticism was a Democratic proposal to temporarily transfer up to $10 million to the General Fund from a retiree health insurance fund.

On the other side, Baldacci and his Democratic allies stood firm in rejecting a Republican proposal to use $18 million earmarked for Maine’s fledgling Dirigo Health program to help offset a $109 million Medicaid shortfall through June.

In building a majority needed to approve a supplementary budget bill, the Democratic Senate bloc depended on the presence of a recuperating member arriving in a wheelchair – Sen. Pamela Hatch, D-Skowhegan, who was injured with her lawmaker husband in a highway accident earlier this month.

Throughout the afternoon, Hatch supplied the tie-breaking votes to guarantee an 18-17 Democratic edge.

The final enactment tally in the House, which had been previewed one night earlier in preliminary voting, was 72-57.

“We got it done, didn’t we?” marveled Democratic Sen. Mary Cathcart, the Senate chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, as the budget-balancing package cleared a last hurdle.

Democrats and Republicans traded charges accusing each other of crafting unstable budget-balancing packages relying on one-time money that will not be available in the future to sustain actions being proposed now.

The Republican plan would threaten to “eliminate the effectiveness of the Dirigo Health plan,” said Senate Majority Leader Sharon Treat, D-Farmingdale.

But Assistant Senate Minority Leader Chandler Woodcock, R-Farmington, maintained that a GOP desire to limit the initial scope of the program only “gives Dirigo Health the opportunity to be solvent.”