Lawmakers Advance Sprawling Spending Bill in Race to Avoid Shutdown

The legislation, which would fund the government through September, would significantly increase federal spending and provide billions of dollars in emergency aid.

The Senate on Tuesday advanced a sprawling spending package that would keep the government open through next fall after senior lawmakers from both parties reached a compromise on billions of dollars in federal spending, including another round of emergency aid to Ukraine.

The roughly $1.7 trillion legislation would increase federal spending from the last fiscal year, providing $858 billion in military spending and more than $772 billion for domestic programs, according to a summary released by Senate Democrats.

Still, it was less than Democrats had wanted and more than several conservative Republicans said they could stomach. With Republican support in the Senate needed for the measure to pass, Democrats agreed to forgo a larger increase that would have ensured health, education and other domestic programs that President Biden and his party have prioritized received as much funding as the military budget.

But that was not enough to mollify House Republican leaders or some conservative senators, including Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. They called on rank-and-file lawmakers to oppose the spending package, arguing that it was far too costly and that any final agreement should wait until they assume control of the House on Jan. 3 and have more leverage in negotiations.

“The real question is this: What is more dangerous to the country? $1.1 trillion in new debt or, as Republican leadership likes to say, ‘Oh, but it’s a big win for the military,’” Mr. Paul said at a news conference with other Republicans opposed to the package. “The process stinks. It’s an abomination.”

Democrats and several senior Senate Republicans rallied behind the package as a necessary compromise that would prevent a shutdown and remove one possible threat of political brinkmanship, even as some acknowledged their frustration with priorities that had been dropped out.

The procedural vote to advance the legislation came just hours after text of the bill was released early Tuesday, as lawmakers scrambled to avoid a shutdown and fund the government before a midnight Friday deadline. The Senate on Tuesday began debate with a vote of 70 to 25, paving the way for passage later this week.

The measure is expected to pass both chambers in the coming days, despite some Republican blowback.

Democrats are seizing on their last chance to shape the federal budget while their party controls both chambers of Congress, and several retiring lawmakers are looking to push a final round of pet projects into law.

“The choice is clear: We can either do our jobs and fund the government, or we can abandon our responsibilities without a real path forward,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, calling the bill “undoubtedly in the interest of the American people” in a statement early Tuesday.

In their effort to secure at least 10 Republican votes to avoid a filibuster, Democrats were forced to abandon a number of priorities, including reviving an expansion of payments to most families with children, emergency aid to counter the toll of the coronavirus pandemic, a bid to lift the cap on the nation’s borrowing limit before an expected deadline next year and a proposal that would give Afghan evacuees a pathway to permanent legal status in the United States.

Republicans — led by Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee — emphasized their success in negotiating more funding for the military, as some conservatives balked at the overall spending increase and lamented that they could have had a stronger negotiating hand had party leaders waited until they controlled the House.

“Republicans’ position all along was quite simple: Defending America and outcompeting our rivals is a fundamental governing duty,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor. “It’s the basic business that we’re supposed to take care of, not something for which Democrats get special rewards, and that is precisely what is finally happening.”

Still, the size of the package prompted swift backlash from conservative House Republicans, forcing Mr. McConnell and his allies in the Senate to try to ward off a rebellion against it and the negotiations with Democrats. More than a dozen House Republicans, in a letter to their Senate counterparts, branded the package an “indefensible assault on the American people” and threatened to actively oppose the legislative priorities of any senator who backed the bill.

“When I’m Speaker, their bills will be dead on arrival in the House if this nearly $2T monstrosity is allowed to move forward over our objections and the will of the American people,” declared Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, who is laboring to lock up the votes he needs to become speaker amid backlash from his right flank.

Given that the 4,155-page package is the final, must-pass legislation for this Congress, lawmakers stuffed it with dozens of funding priorities and unrelated bipartisan measures. That included an overhaul of the electoral vote-counting law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to use to overturn the 2020 election and a ban on the Chinese-owned app TikTok on government devices.

It also includes earmarks, rebranded for a second consecutive year as community project funding, that allow lawmakers to divert some money to specific projects in their districts and states. It also provides the funding needed to fulfill policy changes outlined in bipartisan legislation that became law earlier in this Congress, including a bill aimed at bolstering American semiconductor manufacturing and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Democrats, who muscled through more than $2 trillion over unanimous Republican opposition earlier in this congressional session, in turn spoke of their success in shoring up some health care, veterans assistance, housing and food programs, and protecting other domestic funding priorities, even as they acknowledged that several of their initiatives had to be curtailed or left out.

“This funding bill is overflowing with very good news for our troops, for the Ukrainian brave fighters, for American jobs, for our families and for American democracy,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning. He urged senators to take up the bill quickly in the coming days.

“It’s not everything we would have wanted, of course,” Mr. Schumer said. “When you’re dealing in a bipartisan, bicameral way, you have to sit down and get it down, and that means each side has to concede some things. But it is something that we can be very proud of.”

In an apparent gesture of gratitude of the continuing American investment in his country’s fight against Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine may make a trip to Washington on Wednesday and speak to Congress, though an official briefed on the talks cautioned that the plans were fluid and could change.

One of the most significant bipartisan provisions included in the bill is an overhaul of the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act that was a year in the making after supporters of Mr. Trump sought to exploit ambiguities in the law to disrupt the traditionally ceremonial counting of the presidential electoral ballots on Jan. 6, 2021.

Under the measure drafted by a bipartisan coalition led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, the role of the vice president is defined as strictly ceremonial after Mr. Trump sought unsuccessfully to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes won by Mr. Biden. Backed by both Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell, the measure also raises the threshold for lodging an objection to a state’s electoral votes from a single member of the House and the Senate to 20 percent of both chambers.

“Our bipartisan group worked tirelessly to draft this legislation that fixes the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887 and establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for president and vice president,” Ms. Collins and Mr. Manchin said in a joint statement on Tuesday after the legislation was added to the year-end spending bill.

The package also sets aside more than $40 billion for Ukraine, more than the $37.7 billion the White House requested. The funding includes billions to arm and equip Ukraine’s forces and replenish Defense Department stockpiles from which weapons are being sent to Kyiv. Funds would also be used to bolster the defenses of America’s NATO allies to protect against further Russian aggression. Another $6.2 billion would support a surge of U.S. forces in Eastern Europe that Mr. Biden ordered after Russia’s invasion, including thousands of American troops deployed to Poland and Romania, according to a summary provided by lawmakers.

Disaster aid for the United States is also included in the bill, with about $40 billion to help communities across the country recover from hurricanes, wildfires and droughts.

Plans to improve the nation’s response to future pandemics would also receive funding, though lawmakers did not include a proposal to create an independent panel to investigate the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Many Americans trying to save and pay for retirement could also benefit from the bill, including lower- and middle-income earners. Changes to an existing tax credit, called the saver’s credit, is currently available only to those who owe federal income taxes. In its new form, it would amount to a matching contribution, from the federal government, deposited into taxpayers’ retirement accounts.

The proposal also includes substantial increases in educational programs for low-income and vulnerable student populations, and bolsters the federal Pell Grant award that helps roughly seven million of the nation’s lowest-income students pay for college.

If passed, the legislation would also usher in a number of health care proposals, such as making permanent a plan established in the $1.9 trillion stimulus law that allows women to remain enrolled in Medicaid for a full year after giving birth.

But it is also set to end the continuous coverage that millions of Medicaid recipients have had since March 2020, a policy guaranteed by the federal public health emergency declaration, which is expected to wind down next year. The omnibus bill allows states to begin removing people from Medicaid on April 1, regardless of when the emergency declaration is lifted.

It strengthens Medicaid benefits for some recipients, providing five years of funding for Medicaid in Puerto Rico and permanent funding for coverage in other U.S. territories. The bill also offers other protections for Medicaid recipients, ensuring that children in the program and the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program receive a year of continuous coverage after enrollment.

It would also require Medicare to pay for telemedicine visits with doctors for two more years, extending a popular policy that has been allowed since the beginning of the pandemic. And it ensures another round of funding for the Indian Health Service for the next fiscal year for the first time, giving the agency some budgetary certainty.

The package includes changes related to infant formula supply, in response to a shortage this year that left families struggling to feed their babies. It calls for the Food and Drug Administration to meet with other countries about aligning infant formula oversight standards, for Congress to receive notice of new formula recalls and for the development of a national strategy to ensure that families have the infant formula they need.