COLUMBIA, Mo. – Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Kurt Schaefer said Friday he is ready to “got to the mat” to defend his controversial budget approach – even without support from his Senate Republican leaders.

Speaking on the Columbia, Mo., radio show, “The Morning Meeting,” a day after Senate President Tom Dempsey and Senate Majority Leader Ron Richard said they opposed his budget which would offer lump-sum payments to the stat’s most costly agencies, Schaefer said, “what the Majority Leader and President Pro Tem said undermines my ability right at a critical point in negotiations.”

As the legislature’s conference committee seeking to align the House and Senate’s differing budget proposals, Dempsey on Thursday denounced Schaefer’s plan, which he and Richard both supported in the Senate. “If the lump sum comes back from conference, I will not support it,” he said.

“That was just ridiculous,” Schaefer said. “I treat what they said as background noise.”

Under Schaefer’s proposal, the Departments of Health and Senior Services, Mental Health and Social Services agencies would receive their money in large sums, a plan that would give flexibility to spend it as they see fit. Schaefer has said he hopes it will cause them to find efficiencies in their growing budgets. That is why the total amounts are less than the plans passed by the House.

The lump sum approach was not included in the budget passed by the House of Representatives. This week, meetings of a conference committee established to resolve the differences between the two budgets were postponed as lawmakers negotiated behind closed doors.

Dempsey and Richard are not the lone Republicans opposing Schaefer’s plan. On Thursday, House Speaker John Diehl said he, too, did not support the plan, instead favoring the House’s budget which offers specific appropriations for the agencies rather than lump sums.

The opposition from Republican leaders came a week after Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, announced his own opposition to Schaefer’s budget.