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House Speaker Joe Hackney and Senate Pro Tempore Marc Basnight spent a couple hours with each other and budget staff this evening. I was told going in that they were going to work on the education and capital sections of the budget, which is where House and Senate negotiators have their biggest differences. (For those coming late to this party, the House and Senate and Governor's office are in the last stages of negotiating an update to the state's $21.4 billion budget.)

Hackney emerged from that meeting at 7 p.m. and I asked if there was anything new with the budget.

"No, not really. We're just tossing around some scenarios," he said. I asked if there was going to be a deal worked out, even in principle, tonight.

"No."

Basnight was a little more effusive on his way down to the legislative building's garage.

"We have to reduce the budget by $45 million in recurring and $70 million one time," he said. "So you can see, we're given a very enormous task."

The state budget is funded by two pots of money: recurring revenue such as tax collections that come in every year and one-time money that is essentially windfalls from under-spending or legal settlements. Recurring money is more valuable in legislative land because it can be used for things like salaries, but reductions in either.

Of interest here: the governor has been asking the legislature to revise down the revenue estimates in just this way. Legislators had been resisting that because less money to spend makes a deal all that much harder to reach.

But as Easley said earlier today, the numbers are what the numbers are.

"My biggest concern here is revenues ... the budget has to be balanced. I can't sign an unbalanced budget, I want to make that clear to everybody."

Basnight said that the professional staff had been instructed to work on some compromises tonight and that he and the Speaker would meet again in the morning.

It sounds like they're going to look for ways to save money that don't throw the meat of the agreement out of whack. Easley would like them to not do about $50 million in tax cuts the two chambers have agreeed to, but I'm pretty sure some members would scream about whacking what few tax cuts can be offered up this election year.

At any rate, there's no agreement tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

Planning-wise, Rep. Hugh Holliman told me earlier that if the budget is read-in (legislative talk for formally introduced) Wednesday evening that we may see it debated and voted on Thursday and then again 12:01 a.m. Friday morning, at least on the House side.