If House Democrats decide to "lock down" and vote en masse against each of the six Republican budget bills without participating in the debate, they risk seeing the original spending requests of Gov. Brian Schweitzer trimmed even more, the House Speaker said Wednesday.

In a meeting with the IR Editorial Board, Rep. Scott Sales, R-Bozeman, said further cuts may be necessary to get the 51 votes needed to get the bills passed into the Senate.

"If the Democrats decide they're going to opt out of the process, it could be that the bills have to get smaller to get out of the House, with Rick Jore being the deciding vote," Sales said.

Jore, C-Ronan, the lone Constitution Party representative, regularly votes against spending increases, and thus can't be counted on to be the deciding vote on the Republican budget plan that increases spending 13.6 percent over the next biennium (versus the 22.6 percent spending hike called for in the original House Bill 2, the Schweitzer budget).

Sales and Rep. Michael Lange, R-Billings, the House Majority Leader, said breaking up the budget gives more clout to representatives and senators, at the expense of a much smaller group of officials -- the leader of each chamber as well as committee chairs who deal with the budget, along with the governor -- that they said wielded too much power under the single-bill system.

Lange said the timing of the announcement of the breakup of the budget -- just a few days before the transmittal break -- was his decision, and that he waited until making sure it was a move House Republicans would support.

"I will not walk over to Senator Cooney or the governor and say, 'Here's a strategy I'm going to employ,'" he said. "It's not my job as Republican leader to help out the governor or help out the Senate Democrats or the House Democrats to figure out how to go after me. I feel absolutely no remorse about waiting until a time of my choosing to make that announcement to the Democrats."

He added that he believes if Schweitzer had unveiled his budget in September, rather than closer to Election Day, Republicans would have won more seats in both chambers.

Sales said Schweitzer's concern about not being able to analyze the budget as a whole if the bills reach his desk one at a time is "a red herring," adding that the Democrat-controlled Senate will determine the timing for passing the bills to Schweitzer.

"I can see no downside for the Democrats on these six bills," he said. "They can do whatever they want."

Both Lange and Sales left the door open for a one-time property tax rebate as pushed by the governor, though they said the permanent relief offered in the Republican plan would do more for Montana families.

"It doesn't help me in the long-term as a homeowner to get a $400 check one time and have no relief on my property tax bill," Lange said.

Sales added that all the handwringing over implementing permanent tax relief when future revenues are unknown runs counter to the increases in ongoing agency spending that have been proposed.

"Nobody has any heartburn over (the budget increases)," he said.

John Harrington can be reached at 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.