By Jason Evans

COLUMBIA — The budget, the cigarette tax and a 24-hour waiting period on abortion are just a few of the issues the state Senate hopes to address in the waning days of the legislative session.

Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens) touched on those issues during an appearance on the South Carolina Republican Caucus’ “Senate Time” webcast Wednesday.

As they struggle to push legislation through, lawmakers are still fighting budgetary issues.

“We’re $1.2 billion down in general fund revenue last year to this year,” he said. “That’s probably the most unprecedented drop in general fund revenue … that we’ve experience in the history of the state.”

To find a comparable drop in General Fund revenue on a percentage basis, you’d have to go back to the 1930s, Martin said.

Legislators are addressing the budget problem with reductions in agency spending “across the spectrum,” he said.

In order to receive federal stimulus money marked for education, legislators had to fund K-12 education spending at 2006 budget levels, Martin said.

Gov. Mark Sanford opposes accepting those stimulus funds, “unless we take a like amount out of the rest of state government, or the other one-third of the state agencies remaining, and pay down state debt with that amount of money,” Martin said.

“That’s where we are,” he said.

One unexpected advantage of the budget crisis is reduced bickering between the House and the Senate, Martin said.

“There’s just not much to fight over,” he said.

Martin said he supports a 30-50 cent increase on cigarettes, dedicated primarily to Medicaid or a measure allowing small business owners to more easily provide health care for their employees.

“They’re the ones that are really suffering in their ability to have affordable and adequate health insurance for their employees,” he said. “Just being able to pay the premium, as a small businessman, is very, very difficult.”

Using cigarette tax funds to help small business owners, instead of Medicaid, makes sense, as the federal government “has assisted us, this year and next, with a tremendous amount of Medicaid funding,” Martin said.

The Finance Committee sent the bill back with a 50-cent increase, with the money to be placed in a reserve fund, so legislators can decide its final destination next year, he said.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think that has a prayer of passing the Senate in that form,” Martin said. “Most folks, when they vote on something, they want to commit themselves on where it’s going. My view is that, in the last week of the session, it’s going to be real hard to work that out.”

Martin supports a 24-waiting period before a woman could have an abortion.

“I think it’s a reasonable requirement that we would have on the abortion issue,” he said.

One issue that many hold the waiting period bill up is requiring two ultrasounds before an abortion could be performed, and the expense involved in requiring those procedures, Martin said.

“We ought to be able to work that out,” he said. “I don’t want to unduly burden folks with two expensive medical tests.

“It just makes a lot of good sense to give folks that amount of time on something as important as life,” he continued.