House Republicans unveiled a $1 trillion spending bill setting budgets for hundreds of government programs in a bid to force U.S. lawmakers to wrap up their work for the year. 
 
 Republicans aim to put the more than 1,200-page spending measure to a vote tomorrow, a move designed to give them an advantage in a separate battle with Democrats over extending an expiring payroll tax cut. 
 
 Passing the spending bill would let Republicans leave for their Christmas holiday, increasing pressure on the Democratic-controlled Senate to accept it as well as Republicans’ version of the payroll tax cut. Democrats have been holding up the legislation on concerns that approval would ensure the House recess, forcing them to accept both measures. 
 
 A short-term bill funding federal agencies expires tomorrow and without action by Congress, the government will partially shut down. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, said his colleagues want to break the payroll-tax stalemate. 
 
 “Hopefully, the Senate will act,” he told reporters yesterday. “But you know how they are. We’re not going to sit around here and wait two weeks, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the Senate.” 
 
 Short-Term Measure 
 
 President Barack Obama’s spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said last night in a statement that lawmakers instead ought to pass a short-term budget measure to allow more time for negotiations on the budget bill and the payroll-tax plan. 
 
 “Given the magnitude of the legislation -- providing over $1 trillion dollars in funding -- coupled with the unresolved payroll-tax cut and unemployment insurance extension, Congress should pass a short-term continuing resolution,” Pfeiffer said. 
 
 Some Republicans expressed qualms about their party’s strategy. Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said lawmakers will be asked to vote on legislation they won’t have enough time to read. “It goes against a lot of what we’ve said we were going to do,” he said. 
 
 The party’s campaign “Pledge to America” last year said “we will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must-pass’ legislation” and “instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.” 
 
 Oil Pipeline 
 
 Democrats are balking at some provisions in the House- passed payroll-tax plan, including plans to expedite construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, raising Medicare premiums for wealthier retirees and paring unemployment benefits. 
 
 The spending measure wraps together nine overdue appropriations bills funding almost 40 percent of the government, including the Departments of Defense, Labor, Education, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and others. 
 
 Some House Republicans said yesterday they are unsure how many of their colleagues will support the budget plan, which has been criticized for spending too much. More than 100 Republicans, 40 percent of the chamber’s caucus, opposed a spending bill last month, forcing party leaders to rely on Democratic votes for passage. 
 
 Representative Tim Huelskamp, a Kansas Republican, said yesterday he was withholding judgment because he wasn’t sure what would be in the legislation, which was released early today. 
 
 ‘See What’s In It’ 
 
 “I’m not going to vote for something unless I have a pretty good idea of what’s in it and right now, we don’t,” Huelskamp said. “I’ve got to see what’s in it.” 
 
 The budget bill, combined with a related bill passed last month, would cap non-emergency discretionary spending at $1.043 trillion, according to the Republicans’ summary. That would be $7 billion less than last year and the second consecutive year appropriations have declined. 
 
 The cuts are larger when compared with inflation, currently 3.5 percent, and the increased demand for government services that comes with population growth. 
 
 More than half of the bill is comprised of the Defense Department’s budget, which would increase by $5 billion or about 1 percent to $518 billion. That doesn’t include an additional $115 billion in emergency war funding. 
 
 Foreign Aid 
 
 Some of the biggest cuts would come in foreign aid and international programs, one of the politically easiest areas to cut. Funding for the State Department, global health programs, economic assistance and other initiatives would fall by 13 percent, according to Republicans. 
 
 Pell grants, which help low-income families send children to college, would be cut by $11 billion over the next decade in part by tightening eligibility criteria. 
 
 The Environmental Protection Agency would see a 3 percent cut, which, when combined with reductions approved earlier this year, would mean an 18 percent cut from 2010, according to Republicans. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, would receive a 6 percent cut. 
 
 The bill also includes a number of policy “riders” including ones targeting the administration’s policies on travel and sending money to Cuba, energy-efficient light bulbs and public funding of abortions in Washington, D.C. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Faler in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net ||||| WASHINGTON — Capping a year of last-minute, half-loaf legislation, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to extend a payroll tax cut for only two months, with the chamber’s leaders and the White House proclaiming victory, even as they punted into the new year the issue of how to further extend the tax cut and unemployment benefits. 
 
 In an unusual Saturday vote, the Senate approved by an 89-to-10 vote a $33 billion package that would extend a payroll-tax holiday for millions of American workers, extend unemployment benefits and avoid cuts in payments to doctors who accept Medicare. The measure would be effective through February, when Congress could again be locked in battle over whether and how to extend those provisions. 
 
 The legislation — should it get through the House — mirrors a series of 11th-hour deals devised by the 112th Congress that appeared to solve an impending crisis, but simply pushed the issues forward. 
 
 But House passage next week was thrown into serious doubt on Saturday afternoon, when a number of rank-and-file Republicans objected in a conference call with Speaker John A. Boehner, who tried to persuade them that it was good for their party, particularly the provision that would speed the decision process for construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast known as Keystone XL. Just a week ago, President Obama had threatened to veto that provision. 
 
 “I think the American people are not going to be too pleased about this,” said Representative Tom Graves of Georgia. “I would say it has a very steep uphill fight in our conference. It’s a joke.” 
 
 Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina complained: “The House has capitulated to the Senate too often this year, in our judgment. It is time to stand on principle and fight. And if that means spending Christmas away from home, others have sacrificed far more than that for principle.” 
 
 Some other Republican conference leaders, including the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, also criticized of the two-month extension. 
 
 Many House Republicans dislike the payroll tax cut holiday because it takes money away from the Social Security trust fund, which then must be reimbursed with general fund dollars. They also objected that several policy riders that they and conservative voters hold dear had been stripped out. 
 
 Mr. Obama acknowledged Saturday that a two-month extension would mean Democrats and Republicans could be fighting the same fight again in February. In remarks before the White House press corps, the president said that next year’s vote should be a “formality,” and that he expected that Congress would accomplish his goal of a one-year extension “with as little drama as possible when they come back next month.” 
 
 Any thought that Congress will agree on a yearlong tax-cut extension or on the other provisions is extremely optimistic, given that its work will overlap with Mr. Obama’s State of the Union speech, the heat of the Republican primaries and a presidential campaign hitting full stride. 
 
 Republicans, seizing on the deficit-cutting mantra they heard from the voters who helped them gain sweeping control of the House in 2010, spent much of the last year successfully pushing for vast spending cuts and maintaining the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, including the wealthy. Now, the dynamic has shifted somewhat, with a nearly equal focus in the nation on income disparity, an issue Democrats believe they can seize on. “I think we will be on higher and higher ground,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Senate Democrat, “because the focus in 2012 is going to be on the middle class.” 
 
 Continuing another theme of this Congress, Republican leaders — but not necessarily their rank and file — had wanted a full-year payroll tax cut deal to try to inoculate themselves against accusations by Democrats, as they head into an election year, that they are against tax cuts for low- and middle-income workers. It will be up to Mr. Boehner to convince his members that extending the cut — and at least appearing to work with Democrats even as they labor to unseat Mr. Obama and the Democrats who still control the Senate — will ultimately work in their political favor. 
 
 Mr. Obama, in agreeing to a two-month fix, is betting that Congress, in an election year, will not want to run the political risk of raising taxes. 
 
 During a briefing with reporters Saturday, senior administration officials repeatedly referred to Congress’s low approval ratings with American voters, saying that it would be political suicide for Republicans to turn around next February and not extend the tax cut. “You’ve got to look at the forest,” one senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under guidelines established by the White House before the briefing. “The forest remains that these guys have a weak economy, and they’re going to be running next year.” 
 
 Despite Mr. Obama’s veto threat of any legislation that tried to tie approval of the Keystone pipeline to the payroll tax-cut extension, White House officials said they were sanguine that at the end of the day, Mr. Obama would not find himself forced to fast-track the pipeline. 
 
 The State Department has already put off a decision on Keystone pending changes in the route and further environmental reviews, and has indicated that any attempts to hasten the project will most likely result in its disapproval, a warning White House officials gleefully repeated time and again on Saturday. 
 
 Still, for Mr. Obama, the Keystone project now remains tied to the payroll-tax cut extension, which puts the president at risk in an election year of appearing to coddle the environmental groups who form part of his Democratic base at the expense of the 160 million Americans who the White House says would benefit from continuing the tax cut. 
 
 Mr. Obama’s aides said Saturday that he was delaying his departure for Christmas vacation in Hawaii until what had been expected to be next week’s House vote on the two-month payroll tax extension. If Republican leaders cannot quell a rebellion by their rank-and file, that could also be delayed. But the threat of a government shutdown was averted Saturday when the Senate gave final passage to a $1 trillion bill to finance the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and other agencies.
– In an effort to reach a compromise in one of the two year-end battles facing Congress, Democrats have decided to drop their demand for a surtax on millionaires to finance payroll tax cuts. Without a deal, 160 million workers will face an automatic Social Security tax increase on Jan. 1, but a quick bipartisan agreement on the legislation may be out of reach despite the Democratic retreat, AP notes. "I don't think it's much of a concession," a spokesman for John Boehner says. "It never had any chance of passing the Senate, let alone the House." Lawmakers are also battling over a separate spending bill, and the squabble threatens to force a federal government shutdown by this weekend. House Republicans have unveiled a $1 trillion spending bill providing budgets for hundreds of government programs. They aim to pass the bill tomorrow, allowing them to depart for their Christmas holidays, Bloomberg reports. Some Republican lawmakers, however, are wary of passing legislation that they haven't had time to read, and as leaders squabble, rank-and file lawmakers from both parties are complaining about Congress' inability to perform its most basic tasks, Politico notes.