The U.S. Capitol building is seen before President Barack Obama arrives to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 20, 2015. 
 
 WASHINGTON The Senate passed a Republican-authored budget plan early on Friday that seeks $5.1 trillion in domestic spending cuts over 10 years while boosting military funding. 
 
 The 52-46 vote on the non-binding budget resolution put Congress on a path to complete its first full budget in six years. It came at the end of a marathon 18-hour session that saw approval of dozens of amendments ranging from Iran sanctions to carbon emissions and immigration policies. 
 
 Two Republican senators who are running or considering running for president, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, voted against their party's budget plan, which is similar to one passed by House Republicans on Wednesday. 
 
 In addition to aiming to eliminate deficits within 10 years, both documents seek to ease the path for a repeal or replacement of President Barack Obama's signature health care reform law. 
 
 But differences between the two documents still need to be worked out and a combined budget passed next month by both chambers. Doing so would allow Republicans to invoke parliamentary rules to repeal "Obamacare" with a simple majority in the Senate rather than a tough-to-achieve 60 vote threshold. 
 
 Under the convoluted U.S. spending process, the budgets do not become law, but influence government agency funding bills later in the year. They also showcase the fiscal vision for Republicans, who now control both Houses of Congress for the first time since 2006 and are eager to demonstrate their ability to govern. 
 
 "This balanced budget is an important first step to help Washington live within its means, just like hardworking families have to do every day," said Republican Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi. 
 
 He added that once a final budget is passed lawmakers would begin to work to find alternate savings that would allow them to ease statutory budget caps on military and domestic programs. 
 
 The Senate budget seeks to eliminate U.S. deficits by 2025 without raising taxes through deep cuts to social safety net programs, investments in transportation and education and other domestic programs. 
 
 At the same time, it proposes to boost defense spending by adding about $38 billion to an off-budget war funding account, and offers core Pentagon budget increases in subsequent years. 
 
 More than 50 non-binding amendments were considered on Thursday and Friday in an open "vote-a-rama" process that allowed senators to promote pet causes or try to force opposition members into votes that may be used in campaign ads. 
 
 Republicans passed a symbolic roll-back of the Obama administration's carbon emissions rules for power plants, while a Democratic proposal to recognize climate change risks for the military won approval. 
 
 Another Democratic amendment to let all Americans earn paid sick leave passed with a surprisingly strong 61 votes, with support from 14 Republicans. The Senate also voted unanimously to make it easier to reimpose sanctions if Iran violates any nuclear deal. 
 
 (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Tom Heneghan) ||||| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday afternoon that he is in talks with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to get a short-term budget deal to the floor to stave off a government shutdown. 
 
 Reid said there would be competition for what bill gets considered, with a “number of competing continuing resolution” requests on the table. Because the clock runs out at midnight, Reid would need a time agreement — what Reid referred to a “unanimous consent request” — to cut through the normal procedural red tape. 
 
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 The negotiation between the two Senate leaders is in addition to Reid’s ongoing talks with the House GOP, which still are at an impasse just hours before the government is set to run out of funds. 
 
 Reid said Friday afternoon the Democrats’ proposed “clean” extension would maintain the levels of the continuing resolution set to expire Friday at midnight, a measure that contained $6 billion in cuts over three weeks. Reid added that it also would include funding through the year for the military. 
 
 Republicans in the House passed a one-week measure Thursday that would slash another $12 billion in spending and fund the Defense Department for the rest of the fiscal year. 
 
 Without securing a time agreement on any bill, stopgap or otherwise, the government is likely to shutdown because 30 hours are required between a procedural vote to open debate and a vote for final passage. 
 
 “If we’re very close [to a broader budget deal], we will figure out a way to keep the government running. If we’re very close, within an inch or two of an agreement,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters after a press conference featuring the entire caucus. 
 
 The Senate Democrats’ move toward a temporary bill Friday is a shift in strategy from earlier this week, when leaders insisted they only wanted a long-term deal. President Barack Obama had called the short-term approach a “distraction.” 
 
 By Thursday night, No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin placed the House-approved bill that funds the government for a week and the Department of Defense for a year on the Senate calendar while closing the floor. The formal action was taken when Reid (D-Nev.) was at the White House meeting with the president and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). 
 
 Now that the House-approved bill is on the docket, Reid could offer the Democrats’ bill as an amendment in the form of a substitute, essentially replacing the House legislation with his, passing it and sending it back to the lower chamber. 
 
 Congressional Democrats and the White House have said emphatically and repeatedly that the House Republican short-term offering is unpalatable. It includes a policy rider limiting funds for abortions in the District, but GOP aides are quick to note that measure had been included in another omnibus package Democrats voted for when it first cleared Congress. Earlier Thursday, the administration issued an official policy advisement stating it “strongly opposed” the GOP measure and would recommend the president veto it if it were to make it to his desk. 
 
 A clean version of a short-term spending bill, though, could get enough support to pass the Senate and put the pressure back on the House, if approved, to keep the government open. 
 
 When speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said he could support another temporary stopgap measure, breaking slightly from the message emerging from the White House and leadership. 
 
 “If it were a clean one, absolutely, but clean. No games,” Kerry said. 
 
 After breaking from his third meeting in 24 hours with Reid and Boehner, Obama said he expected an “answer” Friday morning on what the status of Congressional talks is and whether shutdown will be avoided. 
 
 “My hope is, is that I’ll be able to announce to the American people sometime relatively early in the day that a shutdown has been averted…That’s what I hope to be able to announce tomorrow,” Obama said Thursday night in the White House briefing room. “There’s no certainty yet, but I expect an answer sometime early in the day.” ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — House and Senate negotiators reached agreement Tuesday on a sweeping defense policy bill that rejects a plan to force women to register for a military draft, a victory for social conservatives who decried the move as another step toward the blurring of gender lines. 
 
 The $611 billion bill, which authorizes spending for military programs, also hands Democrats a win: Lawmakers struck a provision that liberals said would undercut protections against workplace discrimination based on sexual or gender orientation. 
 
 Congressional staff briefed reporters on the legislation, which has not been released. The staffers were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. 
 
 A vote in the House on the defense bill is expected by Friday, followed by action in the Senate next week. 
 
 The must-pass policy legislation may trigger a veto threat from President Barack Obama over language that bars closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and forbids the Pentagon from beginning a new round of military base closings. The bill also mandates a pay raise for service members larger than the one the Obama administration proposed and stops further reductions in the numbers of active-duty troops. 
 
 Lawmakers had worked for weeks to resolve differences in separate versions of the policy bills passed by the House and Senate. The House, for example, wanted to shift $18 billion from the emergency wartime spending account to pay for additional weapons and combat gear the Pentagon didn't request. 
 
 The negotiators elected instead to boost the wartime account, which isn't constrained by mandatory budget limits, by $3.2 billion to help halt a decline in the military's ability to respond to global threats. The decision may have been motivated by President-elect Donald Trump's assurances that he would increase defense spending, adding tens of thousands more troops and investing in new warships and jet fighters. 
 
 The legislation also includes the $5.8 billion in additional war-related funding Obama requested earlier this month. The so-called supplemental includes $2.5 billion to maintain elevated U.S. troops levels of 8,400 in Afghanistan as announced over the summer. About $383 million would pay for air strikes against Islamic State militants. 
 
 Requiring women to sign up for a possible draft roiled conservatives, who argued the country wasn't ready for such a dramatic change in policy without an open and extended debate. 
 
 A provision in the Senate version of the policy bill would have ordered women to sign up with the Selective Service within 30 days of turning 18 — just as men are — starting in January 2018. But the House refused to go along. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, spoke for a number of Republicans when he described the provision as "coercing America's daughters" into draft registration. 
 
 But proponents of including women viewed the requirement as a sensible step toward gender equality. They pointed to the Pentagon's decision last year to open all front-line combat jobs to women as removing any justification for gender restrictions on registration. 
 
 After the military services were ordered to integrate women into combat jobs, the top uniformed officers in each of the military branches expressed support during congressional testimony for including women in a draft pool. Military leaders maintain the all-volunteer force is working and oppose a return to conscription. 
 
 The U.S. has not had a military draft since 1973, in the waning years of the Vietnam War era. Still, young men between the ages of 18 and 25 are required to register with the Selective Service, the independent federal agency that manages the draft registration. 
 
 Democrats had just as vigorously opposed a measure in the House version of the legislation known as the Russell amendment, named after its author, Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla. They called the provision dangerous and insisted it be removed. 
 
 The amendment is brief and requires any U.S. government office to provide protections and exemptions "to any religious corporation, religious association, religious educational institution, or religious society that is a recipient of or offeror" for a federal contract. 
 
 A group of Senate Democrats wrote in a letter last month that the provision would amount to government-sponsored discrimination by permitting religiously affiliated federal contractors to refuse to interview a job candidate whose faith differs from theirs and to fire employees who marry their same-sex partners or use birth control. 
 
 But Republicans dismissed those concerns. They cast the measure as a safeguard for religious liberty that merely builds on existing law by ensuring that faith-based organizations that perform work for the U.S. government aren't forced to act against their beliefs. 
 
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 Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rplardner
– The Senate powered through an 18-hour session that ended at 3:28am this morning, giving a yea or nay to more than 50 amendments in a "vote-a-rama" marathon and, in a 52-46 vote, approving a budget that looks to pave the way for dumping ObamaCare, Reuters reports. Not one Democrat said yes to the plan, the New York Times reports. The GOP plan for purging deficits by 2025 without raising taxes: slash $5.1 trillion in social "safety net" and other programs. What's going to rise amid the deep cuts is military funding, with a proposal to funnel about $38 billion over to a war-funding account. The Senate now begins a spring recess, so come mid-April, the approved Senate budget will need to be reconciled with the House budget that passed Wednesday. The Times notes it would be "the first common congressional budget in a decade." While not legally binding or in need of Obama's signature, the legislation informs spending limits for domestic and military programs, per the Times, and lays the groundwork for future bills that seem destined for veto fights with the president, the AP notes. "Fortunately for the country, the Republican budget will not become law," Harry Reid tells the Times. Two GOPers voted "nay" to the plan: presidential wannabes Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. As for the dozens of amendments that flew through the approval process, there were some conciliatory overtures from the Republican side: They helped sail through amendments on Social Security and veteran benefits for same-sex couples, and 14 GOPers voted to pass an amendment that calls for American workers to earn paid sick leave, Reuters notes.