The Legislature's Appropriations Committee headed off for the weekend early Friday afternoon knowing it would send a balanced budget to the Legislature next week.

"There's pain out there, no doubt about that," said Chairman Lavon Heidemann.

But he said he is proud of the committee's work.

The committee will take a final vote Monday to send the budget bills to the floor, where they will defend their work next week in debate.

Heidemann said Gov. Dave Heineman's proposal to find $334 million to balance the economy-torn budget set a guideline for the committee. The committee changed a little here and there and did a little more than the governor with cash fund transfers, he said.

"But overall, we didn't wander far," he said.

The committee's general fund budget actions were at $333.4 million, compared with the governor's $336 million proposal, after Thursday's work to mend the deficit.

But the committee voted Friday to use a little more than $3 million in interest from the Nebraska Capital Construction Fund to help balance the budget.

Although most committee members said they were happy to send the $333.4 million to make up the deficit, several said they would rather send a balanced budget to the Legislature next week over one that just came very close.

After several days of hearings, the committee had taken two full days to deliberate.

The committee will ask agencies to send a report by mid-January on how they will handle budget cuts.

Some major differences in the governor's proposal and the committee's were in the sparing transfers from commodity boards' checkoff funds and the Cultural Preservation Endowment Fund, saving a portion of health care provider raises, and increasing the amount of money that will be transferred from the Department of Economic Development's job training cash fund, from $3 million recommended by Heineman to $5 million.

In a round robin on Friday, one senator -- Heath Mello of Omaha -- said he had been unhappy with the process the committee had to use in this special session.

"The governor asked us to fix a car with a bat and a pair of pliers," he said, referring to the parameters Heineman put on what senators could do.

Those parameters did not include using the cash reserve or raising taxes.

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.