Competing groups of House members plan to air their views today on whether gambling is the solution to the state’s budget deficit.

Rep. Jim Craig, D-Manchester, said he has invited any House members who support legalized slot machines to join him at a noon press conference.

Rep. David Hess, R-Hooksett, plans to bring Attorney General Kelly Ayotte to a forum on why slot machine gambling would be bad for the state.

The House has traditionally opposed expanded gambling, while the Senate has been more receptive.

The issue is expected to move the forefront next week as a committee of conference on the budget hammers out a revenue package to support roughly $11.5 billion in spending over the next two years.

The gambling package that passed in the Senate budget plan, on a 16-8 vote, calls for up to 13,000 slot machines at race tracks and two North Country casinos. The bill prices licenses at $50 million for the Rockingham Park horse track, and $20 million each at dog tracks in Belmont and Seabrook and the potential casinos.

Ayotte and police chiefs are opposed to any expansion of gaming that includes slot machines. Hess complained that the Senate plan hasn’t been through a single public hearing, and was passed as a last minute budget fix in the Senate Finance Committee.

He said a noon session of the ad-hoc House Anti-Casino Coalition will focus on discussion of the plan’s shortcomings.

“Even if it can’t go through the whole vetting process, this is a major policy decision and we’d better know more about,” said Hess.

Craig said he doesn’t know how many House members will show up with him today. The closest a casino bill came to passage in the House this year was a 295-72 vote that killed the bill, HB 593.

Craig said, “I’m a realist. It’s never gotten a really good reception in the House. I just want people in the House to know it’s a viable option. Sometimes they need cover, to hear someone say this is the way to go even if it’s not leadership’s preferred source of revenue.”

Rep. Christine Hamm, D-Hopkinton, who chaired a 16-month study of gambling expansion, will be with Craig.

“I went into the study with an open but, I think, skeptical mind,” she said. “We have all this information and I don’t think people have looked at it without having their minds already made up.”

Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester, estimated that passage of a slot machine bill would produce $205 million over the next two years. Lately he has cautioned that it could take time for the full build-out of a legalized system to take place.