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The Senate began it's budget debate at 9:30 a.m. or there about.

So far, it's been the usual suspects saying the usual things, although Sen. Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, did get off a good one-liner as he objected to the budget.

He noted that the fire alarms went off yesterday.

"I think what happened was the budget was being put together and the explosion of spending set the alarms off," Berger said.

Update: Some audio from the debate:

• Here's a extended audio take of Berger's comments.

• Sen. Kay Hagan says the budget is good for education. "Education is the key for what happens in North Carolina in the future," she said.

The budget debate did point one thing I missed on my first read through.

It closes a glitch in the tax code that large companies used to get an unintended tax break through the use real estate investment trusts. Wal-Mart, we're looking at you here, although that's not the only one.

The way this works, a company sets up a separate real estate corporation. That corporation owns all the company's real estate and leases the property to the mother company. Doing this has created some big ol' tax write-offs for the corporations in question.

It looks like the conference report (page 314) closes that loophole.

Update:

The Senate voted to approve the budget on a 25-13 vote.

There were six pairs, which means 12 senators weren't counted in that total. Pairing is an arcane Senate tradition by which a senator who is absent can still have their votes sort-of record. Basically, the absent senator finds a colleague who would vote the opposite way. Those two votes then cancel each other out.

They don't show up in the final vote tally but are recorded in the Senate's official record.

The House is scheduled to go into session this afternoon at 12:30 p.m. and the budget bill is the first thing on its calendar.