AUGUSTA – As wrangling over the state budget continues,the much-laudedbipartisan spirit that dominated on the Appropriations Committee appears to have quickly evaporated.

Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, and Rep. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, found themselves at odds on the House floor Thursday after Millett proposed an amendment to the budget bill that would have restored $250,000 in cuts made tohome- and community-based care for thementally retarded.

The cause is something close to Craven’s heart, but she voted againstit. The vote fell along party lines to defeat the amendment 79-62.

“We were really disappointed that (Republicans) would pull a stunt to try and force Democrats to vote against supporting health and human services when (the Republicans) had proposed cutting 22,000 people off health care,” said Travis Kennedy, spokesman for House Democrats, referring to the cuts made by Republicans in their minority budget report.

Craven said during deliberations by the Appropriations Committee that she had lobbied Millett to support reducing cuts to mental retardation, but in the end he had voted with his fellow Republicans.

“If we allowed the amendment, then it would really unravel the whole budget,” Craven said.

Kennedy confirmed Democrats voted against the amendment on principle because it threatened to thwart the rest of the budget process.

Kennedy said Millett, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, had plenty of time to include something he felt was important in the budget voted out by the committee.

Millett’s amendment would have cut ‘out-of-state travel’ from the executive branch budget by $250,000 and reappropriated it toward MaineCare. The dollar amount represents less than 1 percent of the estimated $190 million budget shortfall.

Millett said he thought of cutting back on travel money because of a story he had read in the Sun Journal. On March 2, the paper ran an analysis of travel by state government officials that revealed travel costs had more than doubled over the past three years, despite a call from Gov. John Baldacci to be frugal.

“We (Republicans) had talked about second-guessing ourselves, that maybe we cut too much,” Millett said Friday. “So I had tried in my caucus to add some money back and try and find a way to do it.”

But Kennedy doesn’t buy it.

“It was an extremely carefully negotiated budget,” Kennedy said. “It’s hard to say we want to save $250,000 for this one very specific part when we want to take a sledgehammer to the rest of the entire system.”

Craven agrees.

“It was a political ploy,” she said. “Do I care about out-of-state travel? I don’t. That is something that’s not going to hurt an organization, but cuts to mental retardation services are going to hurt real people.”

Kennedy said the Appropriations Committee had already worked hard to come up with a balanced budget, and leadership had agreed to minimize amendments.

“There was an agreement that we had a balanced budget out of committee, and amendments to make slight adjustments were only going to put it in a position where it would be harder to pass in the Senate,” Kennedy said.

Craven said all the cuts that could have been made were.

“(Appropriations) already voted in favor of cutting just about every item that came in front of us,” she said. “There is no line, no account that says ‘travel budget.’ Rep. Millett is a master at state government financing and he is very aware of that.”

Millett said partisanship is a part of the process.

“By and large, most people want to do the right thing,” he said. “There’s so many complex issues involved in the budget, there’s so much policy wrapped up, and it’s unfortunate that politics gets in the way at the very end and clouds our ability to do the right thing.”

Budget negotiations remain at an impasse until Monday because the Senate and House have passed different versions and have yet to reconcile the two.