PROVIDENCE –– Struggling to close a $425-million shortfall for the budget year that begins in just two weeks, the state House of Representatives battled late into the night on the merits of a $6.89-billion spending package that includes dramatic cuts to Rhode Island’s programs for the elderly, poor and disabled.

Nine hours after the debate began, lawmakers unanimously approved the massive plan, while resisting calls to raise taxes. They increased local education assistance for cities and towns, but cut non-education aid. And they OK’d $90 million in cuts to the state’s work force, despite not knowing how the savings would be achieved.

But the most heated debate was reserved for an odd collection of issues: illegal immigration, movies and alternative schools.

Even a modest proposal to allow motorists to use headphones drew more discussion than millions of dollars in cuts to organizations such as Meals on Wheels, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and the state’s largest homeless shelter, Crossroads Rhode Island.

House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino shrugged in disbelief over the lack of debate over sweeping changes that would affect tens of thousands of low-income Rhode Islanders.

Political observers weren’t surprised, given the state’s situation.

Even if legislators wanted to reverse the cuts, there simply weren’t many popular alternatives as the state trudges through its worst fiscal mess since the credit-union crisis of the early 1990s.

“House Democrats and House Republicans all realize that this is the best budget that they could have possibly put together,” said Daniel Beardsley, executive director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, one of the many lobbyists watching the debate from the public gallery high above the House chamber.

Indeed, lawmakers couldn’t recall another budget vote that passed without a single “No” vote. The enormity of the challenge brought political alliances together like never before, according to Costantino.

“We are in very difficult times. We walk outside this building, we feel it, we see it, we touch it, we experience it,” he said. “With this budget we have demonstrated the resolve to tackle the issues of these tough times.”

The Senate is expected to approve the state budget later today. The tax-and-spend plan will become law short of a gubernatorial veto, which is not expected.

“This budget represents a watershed moment in the recent history of Rhode Island state government,” Governor Carcieri said in a statement released after midnight. “In the face of a severe fiscal crisis, we have worked together to reduce spending and balance the budget without raising taxes.”

The early hours of last night’s session were dominated by fiery debate over a one-sentence amendment from Rep. Peter Palumbo.

The Cranston Democrat sought to prevent undocumented pregnant women from qualifying for the state’s subsidized health insurance program, RIte Care.

The proposal was a last attempt to crack down on immigration in a session that saw more than a dozen such bills unveiled and then left in limbo.

Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox implored his fellow legislators to think of the children affected by the proposed policy change. Denying their mothers access to the free prenatal care that now exists for all income-eligible women, regardless of immigration status, could endanger the health of American-born babies and cost the state millions down the road, he said.

Though representatives ultimately sided with Fox, several said Cumberland Rep. Richard Singleton stole the spotlight, speaking fervently of his impoverished upbringing in a Boston neighborhood. Today in Rhode Island, there are thousands of young families struggling to do the same, he said.

“Whether you’re a Democrat or you’re a Republican should not make a bit of difference,” Singleton pleaded with fellow lawmakers. “It should be that you’re an American. And yes, as an American, I’m angry that there are benefits given to non-Americans over and above those who are American. If that makes me a bigot, well I’m a bigot.”

Protesters waving signs that read things like, “Tax cuts for the rich, budget cuts for the rest,” greeted legislators as they entered the House chamber yesterday afternoon.

But the Assembly resisted calls to reverse tax breaks aimed at high earners, such as the capital gains tax and flat tax alternative. They also left alone the state’s income and sales taxes.

Lawmakers did, however, include a proposal to raise $5.6 million by increasing the tax on medical and dental premiums from 1.1 to 1.4 percent. The increase would be borne by the major insurers, Blue Cross, United and Delta Dental, but may result in higher medical costs if the companies pass the increase on to consumers as they have in the past.

But it was the movies, not health-care costs that drew fire last night.

Despite cries from Republicans to leave the state’s fledgling movie-production tax credit program on the cutting room floor, lawmakers ultimately agreed to cap the film credits at $15 million per year, to be doled out on a first-come basis to production companies that spend money making movies in the Ocean State.

The vote came after more than an hour of insults slung from both sides of the aisle in a sometimes comic, sometimes angry debate that some might call fit for a Hollywood script.

House Minority Leader Nicholas Gorham chastised legislators for their so-called obsession with the big screen, while Speaker William Murphy, armed at the rostrum with a lunar calendar, accused Gorham of “barking at the moon.”

Those who favor the movie productions lamented the probable loss of film business to neighboring states and said the change would put the much-touted plan to build a movie studio in jeopardy.

While some subjects saw debates as intense as they were long-winded, others saw no discussion at all.

A massive 103-page plan to transform the state’s welfare and Medicaid programs received virtually no debate, despite months of work from House leadership and the governor’s office. That might have been because the rank and file didn’t have time to read it.

Most legislators received a final draft of plans just minutes before yesterday’s vote

Linda Katz, policy director for Rhode Island’s Poverty Institute, said it was “disheartening” that lawmakers adopted the major changes “so radically with so little discussion.”

The plan cuts eligibility for cash assistance, known as welfare, from a five-year lifetime limit to four years. Recipients would be allowed only two consecutive years of welfare in any five-year period.

The proposal also allows Carcieri to pursue a “global Medicaid waiver” from the federal government. The state would receive broad authority to reshape Medicaid programs, but only after agreeing to cap spending on programs for the elderly, poor and disabled for the next five years.

Rhode Island would be the first state in the nation to be granted such a waiver. The compromise legislation adopted last night would allow the Assembly to block any proposed Medicaid changes within 30 days after being proposed by the Carcieri administration.

Advocates for the elderly embrace changes that would divert people away from nursing homes, but warn of waiting lists for the elderly, reduced access to in-home care, and cuts to transportation programs for medical appointments.

The Assembly’s budget anticipates saving $67 million by instituting the changes. Some doubt that the savings are realistic.

“There are concerns making the savings proposed in the operating budget, but this is a very good first step,” said John C. Simmons, head of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council.

And there were a slew of provisions that drew little attention last night but had broad implications for different groups across the state.

A plan to cut $12.5 million in non-school aid from cities and towns sailed to passage with no changes and no comments from lawmakers, all of whose communities would be affected by the change.

Legislators seemed similarly poised late last night to vote through a plan to allocate up to $12.8 million next year in gambling money to local school districts. But that aid is contingent on new revenues from overnight gambling at Twin River and there’s no guarantee that money will materialize.

Similarly, there was virtually no discussion on a provision to cut $17 million from the state’s three public universities and $2.6 million from the agency that gives need-based college scholarships.

Meanwhile, after a heated debate, representatives voted to prohibit municipal health-care contracts from specifying a health-insurance provider.

Supporters of a plan to create a new class of public schools –– known as mayoral academies –– watched nervously from the gallery high above the House floor for more than two hours as legislators dissected their plan to build a school free from union provisions.

Several seats away, labor leaders for the state’s teachers’ unions who have criticized the plan for gutting teacher protections waited with a very different set of hopes.

Lawmakers ultimately approved the mayoral academy, rejecting a proposal to reverse some of the freedoms for the proposed school. “In a lot of ways, public education got a big win tonight,” said the bill’s architect, Cumberland Mayor Daniel J. McKee.

Meanwhile, with the Senate refusing to act on a House-passed bill requiring lawmakers to share the cost of their 100-percent state-paid health insurance premiums, Republicans tried to get their colleagues to put the requirement in the state budget.

“If you don’t want to be hypocrites,” House Minority Leader Robert Watson, R-East Greenwich, said: “you have to support this amendment. But the proposal was tabled instead on a 43-to-26 vote at the request of House Majority Whip Peter Kilmartin. When legislators finally approved the budget after 11:30 p.m., wary observers said they were just glad it was over in such a tough year.

“Overall it’s been an incredibly frustrating year,” said Robert A. Walsh, executive director of the National Education Association of Rhode Island. “This is a very tough budget and a lot of people that we care deeply about have been hurt by it. We certainly see the big picture of the fiscal situation in this state, but honestly, we would have done it differently.”

With reports from Journal State House reporter Katherine Gregg

speoples@projo.com