AUGUSTA – Majority legislative Democrats accused Republicans on Tuesday of playing politics with the state budget and gave the GOP until May 13 to come up with a line-by-line alternative to the two-year spending plan adopted in late March.

“The time for gamesmanship and political stunts is over,” Senate President Beth Edmonds said as she and fellow Democrats gathered en masse outside the State House. “We have a lot of important business before us, and the budget veto is a cloud over everything we do.”

Funding for the $5.7 billion, two-year state budget enacted March 27 depends in part on a $450 million revenue bond issue, a provision Republicans strongly oppose. The bond would not require voter approval.

Among the harshest GOP critics is GOP Sen. Peter Mills of Cornville, who said Tuesday “it is completely dishonest and immoral” to borrow money to pay the state’s bills.

“The people of Maine get this. They understand it’s like a kid with his first credit card,” said Mills, one of five Republican lawmakers who initiated a people’s veto campaign that calls for a referendum on the borrowing provision.

Democratic leaders derided the challenge as a “politicians’ veto” that creates uncertainty over everything they will do in the weeks left in the session. Lawmakers still must deal with hundreds of bills concerning taxes, bonds, the environment and other issues.

They gave the Republicans 10 days from Tuesday to come up with an alternative budget proposal of their own. Senate Majority Leader Michael Brennan, D-Portland, promised to consider it as an amendment to a supplemental budget package to be considered in the weeks ahead.

Mills said he already put a counterproposal on the table while the budget was being debated. He proposed reducing the borrowing and raising new revenue by temporarily hiking Maine’s 5 percent state sales tax by a penny. The plan was defeated “because the Democrats put the kibosh on it,” Mills said.

The Maine Republican Party said the people’s veto vote “is an alternative that Republicans are embracing.”