Democrats and Republicans in the Senate want you to know they don’t love this year’s $27 billion budget, but they voted for it in a landslide.

“The bottom line is, I’m going to vote yes on this budget because of the great work of the Joint Budget Committee members (who drafted it). I’m proud of what they did, but I’m not voting for it because I’m proud of what it does,” said Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder. “This budget guarantees we will continue to remain in the lower quartile of the worst in the country in funding education and our infrastructure. This is just the opposite of what we should be doing.”

In the end the Senate voted 30-5 to send its version of the budget bill to a last committee that will reconcile the House and Senate versions.

The no votes included four Republicans — Sens. Tim Neville, R-Littleton, Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, Chris Holbert, R-Parker, and Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs — and one Democrat — Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood.

Neville and Woods proposed amendment after amendment to the budget. They mainly pushed to boost transportation funding at the expense of social programs — the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, a contraception program, for example, and another, the Healthy Kids Colorado survey, that asks teens questions on lifestyle, including on sex and drug use.

The attempt to cut the contraception program was thwarted when Republican Sens. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, and Beth Martinez Humenik, R-Thornton, joined Democrats and two Republican members of the budget committee in voting it down.

Senators did find much to celebrate in the work budget writers did to avoid large cuts proposed in the early draft budget submitted by Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Budget committee member Sen. Kevin Grantham, R-Canon City, said he sympathized with colleagues who complained that the state’s budget keeps growing.

“We budget to current law,” he said. “The fact of the matter is it’s growing, and growing exponentially, and that’s something we’re going to have to work on. We’re going to have to change current law to do that. The vast expanse we see under Medicaid and too many other programs, it is getting too big. It’s something us and future legislators will have to deal with, especially when we start seeing limited revenues coming in.”

The two versions of the budget now go to a six-member joint House and Senate committee, usually made up of the six members of the Legislature’s budget committee — Sens. Grantham, Pat Steadman, D-Denver, Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, and Reps. Millie Hamner, D-Dillon, Dave Young, D-Greeley, Bob Rankin, R-Carbondale. Two members from each chamber must agree on the final rewrite.

Sticking points will concern funding for the state’s air quality division, part of the Department of Public Health and Environment, and a ban on the purchase of fetal tissue for research at state colleges and universities.

Republicans have sought to strip money for the air quality division that would fund work on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The Senate budget proposes cutting $365,000 from the division budget, which officials estimated would cost the division two staffers.

–Ramsey@coloradostatesman.com