COLUMBIA  - Legislators head into Monday's state budget debate more dependent than ever on a new round of federal bailout money to preserve health services to the state disabled, poor and elderly while considering raising the state's cigarette tax.

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The $5 billion budget - down from $7 billion two years ago - is a bitter dose for Republicans, who dominate the Statehouse with a 73-51 majority. They are trying to keep "no new tax" promises as the June primaries approach, all while fretting tea party activists' opposition to the stimulus cash. Meanwhile, the political season begins Tuesday when candidates vying for all 124 seats in the House can begin filing campaign papers.

Republicans "could very well be forced to cast a vote that might invite an intraparty challenger from the right," said Winthrop University political scientist Scott Huffmon.

Tea Party activists were plenty irked last year when Republicans balanced the current fiscal year's budget with federal cash and waged a protracted battle with Gov. Mark Sanford in state and federal court.

"They are definitely in a bind," said Allen Olson, who leads the Columbia Tea Party. And it began with taking stimulus cash last year.

"With that, they really started the hole they're in. The more money they get from the federal government, the deeper the hole they are in," Olson said.

And the South Carolina Association of Taxpayers says legislators need to avoid tax increases, including raising the nation's lowest cigarette tax.

"It's a terrible time to raise taxes," said Don Weaver, the taxpayer group's director. He said putting more money into the state's budget will halt the needed shrinking of government that's bound to make it more efficient.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Cooper said Thursday that he'll introduce a budget amendment that spends nearly $200 million in federal Medicaid money that's part of a federal jobs bill the U.S. Senate has approved.

But without the federal money - which at least can help stave off problems - Cooper's budget has deep reductions that:

- Leave nearly 26,000 people in the state without services from the Department of Disabilities and Special Needs. Programs for autistic children would be eliminated, along with modifications at homes that help people with spinal cord injuries. Programs that let the disabled work and their family members hold down jobs also would end.

- Give teachers up to five days of unpaid leave and administrators up to 10. The state would do away with a training incentive for educators, and colleges would see state funding drop by 21 percent.

- Slash a fifth, or $35 million, from the Department of Mental Health budget. The agency says that will force more of the state's mentally ill into emergency rooms, reduce or eliminate services for more than 66,000 people and cut at least 340 jobs.

- Lay off 27 State Law Enforcement Division officers, pay for 47 fewer public defenders and lay off 100 Juvenile Justice Department workers and shut down one of its three evaluation centers.

Olson said the threatened reductions are a ploy to avoid spending cuts. "That's one of the scare tactics they're using," Olson said.

But state Rep. Ted Vick, a Chesterfield Democrat, said the state's already done plenty to cut spending, noting the state's budget is down by more than a fifth in two years while other states have cut far less. "North Carolina and Georgia don't appear to be falling off the face of the earth like this state is in having to cut to the bone," Vick said.

There will be plenty of proposals to raise taxes.

The budget left Cooper's committee with a 30 cent increase in the state's 7-cent-per-pack cigarette tax. Raising the nation's lowest cigarette tax to 37 cents a pack would generate $88 million, with $85 million of that going to a trust fund for future Medicaid program expenses.

Others want that increase to be much higher.

And Vick wants to create a statewide tax on homes worth $200,000 or more that would reduce state sales taxes by $614 million. While it's not a tax increase, Vick said it makes the state less dependent on sales taxes.

State Rep. James Smith, a Columbia Democrat, said some sales tax exemptions should be temporarily repealed. That includes adding the sales tax back onto groceries, which would generate about $400 million and cover the state's essential needs.

"We need to stop this temporary patchwork of fixes," Smith said.

Weaver, of the taxpayer association, said those proposals should go nowhere. The property tax idea, for instance, would undo breaks the Legislature approved in 2006 that raised the sales tax while ending the practice of taxing groceries. And he says no tax changes should be put into the budget while a state panel considers sweeping changes to the state's tax code, which could do away with dozens of sales tax breaks.

"It's a no-win situation," said Chip Felkel, a Greenville Republican campaign consultant. But fiscal ideology may have to give a bit.

"You have to do what's best for the people who elected you and you have to be willing sometimes to buck the conventional wisdom or the political process and take positions that are right for your constituents," Felkel said. "That might include, God forbid, looking for a way to pay for things. And that might include, God forbid, raising some taxes."