House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speak to reporters about the massive government spending bill moving through Congress, on Capitol Hill in... (Associated Press) 
 
 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speak to reporters about the massive government spending bill moving through Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 22, 2018. The bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending bill pours huge sums into... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress gave final approval Friday to a giant $1.3 trillion spending bill that ends the budget battles for now, but only after late obstacles skirted close to another shutdown as conservatives objected to big outlays on Democratic priorities at a time when Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. 
 
 Senate passage shortly after midnight averted a third federal shutdown this year, an outcome both parties wanted to avoid. But in crafting a sweeping deal that busts budget caps, they've stirred conservative opposition and set the contours for the next funding fight ahead of the midterm elections. 
 
 The House easily approved the measure Thursday, 256-167, a bipartisan tally that underscored the popularity of the compromise, which funds the government through September. It beefs up military and domestic programs, delivering federal funds to every corner of the country. 
 
 But action stalled in the Senate, as conservatives ran the clock in protest. Then, an unusual glitch arose when Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, wanted to remove a provision to rename a forest in his home state after the late Cecil Andrus, a four-term Democratic governor. 
 
 At one point, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., stepped forward to declare the entire late-night scene "ridiculous. It's juvenile." 
 
 Once the opponents relented, the Senate began voting, clearing the package by a 65-32 vote a full day before Friday's midnight deadline to fund the government. 
 
 "Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses - and parties," tweeted Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who spent the afternoon tweeting details found in the 2,200-page bill that was released the night before. "No one has read it. Congress is broken." 
 
 Paul said later he knew he could only delay, but not stop, the outcome and had made his point. 
 
 The omnibus spending bill was supposed to be an antidote to the stopgap measures Congress has been forced to pass — five in this fiscal year alone — to keep government temporarily running amid partisan fiscal disputes. 
 
 Leaders delivered on President Donald Trump's top priorities of boosting Pentagon coffers and starting work his promised border wall, while compromising with Democrats on funds for road building, child care development, fighting the opioid crisis and more. 
 
 But the result has been unimaginable to many Republicans after campaigning on spending restraints and balanced budgets. Along with the recent GOP tax cuts law, the bill that stood a foot tall at some lawmakers' desks ushers in the return of $1 trillion deficits. 
 
 Trump only reluctantly backed the bill he would have to sign, according to Republican lawmakers and aides, who acknowledged the deal involved necessary trade-offs for the Democratic votes that were needed for passage despite their majority lock on Congress. 
 
 "Obviously he doesn't like this process — it's dangerous to put it up to the 11th hour like this," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who opposes the bill and speaks regularly to Trump. "The president, and our leadership, and the leadership in the House got together and said, Look, we don't like what the Democrats are doing, we got to fund the government." 
 
 White House legislative director Marc Short framed it as a compromise. "I can't sit here and tell you and your viewers that we love everything in the bill," he said on Fox. "But we think that we got many of our priorities funded." 
 
 Trying to smooth over differences, Republican leaders focused on military increases that were once core to the party's brand as guardians of national security. 
 
 "Vote yes for our military. Vote yes for the safety and the security of this country," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., ahead of voting. 
 
 But even that remained a hard sell. In all, 90 House Republicans, including many from the conservative House Freedom Caucus, voted against the bill, as did two dozen Republicans in the Senate. 
 
 It was a sign of the entrenched GOP divisions that have made leadership's job controlling the majority difficult. They will likely repeat on the next budget battle in fall. 
 
 Democrats faced their own divisions, particularly after failing to resolve the stalemate over shielding young Dreamer immigrants from deportation as Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has left it for the courts to decide. 
 
 Instead, Trump won $1.6 billion to begin building and replacing segments of the wall along the border with Mexico. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus opposed the bill. 
 
 Also missing from the package was a renewal of federal insurance subsidies to curb premium costs on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Trump ended some of those payments as part of his effort to scuttle President Barack Obama's health care law, but Republicans have joined Democrats in trying to revive them. 
 
 Bipartisan efforts to restore the subsidies, and provide additional help for insurance carriers, foundered over disagreements on how tight abortion restrictions should be on using the money for private insurance plans. Senate Republicans made a last-ditch effort to tuck the insurance provisions into the bill, but Democrats refused to yield on abortion restrictions. 
 
 Still, Democrats were beyond pleased with the outcome. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., chronicled the party's many gains, and noted they could have just have easily withheld votes Republicans needed to avert another shutdown. 
 
 "We chose to use our leverage to help this bill pass," Pelosi said. 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said as the minority party in Congress, "We feel good." He added, "We produced a darn good bill." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Jill Colvin contributed to this report. 
 
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 WASHINGTON — With the government reopened and a debt default averted for now, Congressional negotiators on Thursday plunged into difficult budget talks to avoid a repeat crisis within months, and quickly agreed to lower their sights from the sort of grand bargain that has eluded the two parties for three years. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 After approval late Wednesday of the agreement ending the standoff, the deal-making mantle shifted overnight from the leaders of the Senate to the Budget Committee leaders, Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, two less senior lawmakers who nonetheless could make very effective salespeople since they command loyal followings in their parties. The political pressure lifted as well, for now. 
 
 But the need for a bipartisan breakthrough, even a modest one, was amplified by the economic costs wrought by the 16-day shutdown and near-default on government obligations. 
 
 “The key now is a budget that cuts out the things that we don’t need, closes corporate tax loopholes that don’t help create jobs, and frees up resources for the things that do help us grow — like education and infrastructure and research,” President Obama said Thursday from the White House, setting ambitious goals for Congress even as his own role in the bargaining was unclear. 
 
 The question of what a new House-Senate budget conference can deliver by its Dec. 13 deadline — in time for Congress to act by Jan. 15 on funding to keep the government open — remained the subject of deep skepticism, well earned by past failures at reaching so-called grand bargains for deficit reduction and spending investments in the past three years. 
 
 With the scope of the talks narrowed for now, on the table are ideas left over from past, failed bargaining: possible reductions in other programs — like farm subsidies, federal pensions, the Postal Service and unemployment insurance — and relatively minimal tax loophole closings, possibly as little as $55 billion. 
 
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 While there is nonetheless hope on both sides for a defining budget deal, the three-week budget crisis scrambled Washington’s power structure. 
 
 Democrats, united throughout, believe they enter this next round far stronger, backed by a president who proved his own resolve. Republicans, having played their trump card by shutting down the government, are weakened and more divided than ever. 
 
 Reflecting his party’s chastened state heading into the next phase, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, told the conservative National Review on Thursday, “A government shutdown is off the table.” 
 
 Even so, Republicans enter these new talks with one advantage: if the negotiations fail, the next round of across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration will hit automatically, even deeper than the first. Democrats want to avoid that far more than Republicans do. 
 
 Both Mr. Ryan and Ms. Murray struck positive notes. 
 
 “Our goal is to do good for the American people, to get our debt under control, to do smart deficit reduction, and to do things we think can grow the economy and get people back to work,” Mr. Ryan said. 
 
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 Ms. Murray said, “We believe there is common ground.” 
 
 By definition, common ground suggests no grand bargain, which would require a much more difficult trade-off where they fundamentally differ — higher tax revenues that Republicans oppose, in exchange for reductions in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that Democrats vow they will not entertain without curbs on tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations. 
 
 With the last-minute settlement, Washington found itself battered, exhausted and about where it was back in March in terms of budget progress. That month, Congressional Republicans and the White House failed to prevent the sequestration cuts from taking effect across military and domestic programs. 
 
 The Republican-led House and Democratic-controlled Senate passed vastly different budgets, but Republicans blocked Democrats’ repeated efforts to convene a conference committee to reconcile the differences — until this week. 
 
 Congress not only reopened the government through Jan. 15 and raised the nation’s borrowing limit effective to Feb. 7 on Wednesday. It also mandated the formal budget negotiations in a separate parliamentary motion. 
 
 “Nobody can guarantee success, but what we can say is that if we don’t make the effort and get together and talk, that would guarantee failure,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, House Democrats’ chief negotiator. 
 
 To improve the prospects for some success, the negotiators largely agreed at a closed-door breakfast on Thursday that a deal involving significant new tax revenues and large-scale changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, whose growth in an aging population is driving long-term projections of growing debt, is not going to happen. 
 
 Instead, they agreed, the talks will aim at a more modest, confidence-building measure to replace the sequestration cuts in 2014. Negotiators could aim higher, for a deal saving at least $1 trillion over the next nine years to substitute completely for the arbitrary sequestration cuts. But neither side was hopeful of that. 
 
 Even with lower sights, negotiators face the same hurdle over taxes that has ended a series of bipartisan talks in 2011 — between Mr. Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner; between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader; and between lawmakers on a so-called supercommittee. 
 
 “The old bugaboo that has made other conferences fail is revenues,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat. 
 
 Tea Party-infused lawmakers seemed unbowed and still uncompromising despite their loss over the debt limit and government funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. So did the conservative groups like Club for Growth and Heritage Action that goaded them on. 
 
 Like the Congressional actors, the White House is not expecting a grand bargain, as much as Mr. Obama — and Mr. Boehner, for that matter — would like to have that as a legacy. But it is determined to see an end to sequestration, and is counting on the cooperation of Republican leaders since the military is in line for greater automatic reductions than domestic programs in January. 
 
 Rank-and-file Republican lawmakers and the party base, however, have come to see sequestration as a victory. 
 
 By his televised remarks at the White House, Mr. Obama sought to project a tone of compromise, aides said, though some Republicans heard some partisan gloating. He also described a budget goal more expansive than the Congressional negotiators are setting, but one that neither party’s leaders rule out. 
 
 “This shouldn’t be as difficult as it’s been in past years because we already spend less than we did a few years ago,” Mr. Obama said. “Our deficits are half of what they were a few years ago. The debt problems we have now are long term, and we can address them without shortchanging our kids, or shortchanging our grandkids, or weakening the security that current generations have earned from their hard work.” ||||| WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted Friday morning to reject the House's stopgap spending bill, less than 12 hours after the House's Republican leaders had forced it through on their second try. 
 
 The Senate vote was 59 to 36 to table the House bill, effectively killing it. Some conservative Republicans joined in rejecting the measure. 
 
 The House, in the wee hours of Friday morning, had passed its latest version of a stopgap spending bill after rejecting on Wednesday a nearly identical version of the legislation, which is needed to keep the government open after Sept. 30 and to provide assistance to victims of natural disasters. The House vote was 219 to 203. 
 
 House Republican leaders, trying to recover from a humiliating political defeat, had made one change in the bill -- but it was one that most Democrats in the House and Senate opposed, trimming green energy loans. The new version would offset more of the cost of disaster assistance by rescinding $100 million from an Energy Department program that guaranteed a loan for Solyndra, the solar equipment manufacturer that filed recently for bankruptcy protection. 
 
 The bill, to finance government operations for seven weeks after the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, had faced problems in the Senate, where Democrats want to spend more without cutting other programs to offset the cost. 
 
 Senate Democratic leaders had said all along that the House version would be swiftly rejected in the Senate, which had already passed a version of its own. Indeed, the senators acted even before the House version had formally arrived for their consideration. 
 
 "The House bill is not an honest effort at compromise," said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. "It fails to provide the relief that our fellow Americans need as they struggle to rebuild their lives in the wake of floods, wildfires and hurricanes, and it will be rejected by the Senate." 
 
 Mr. Reid said he had hoped that House Republicans would move toward the middle. "Instead," he said, "they moved even further toward the Tea Party." 
 
 It is not clear how the two houses will overcome the impasse and avert a government shutdown. Most federal agencies need money to continue operations beyond Oct. 1. The disaster relief fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running short of money. And lawmakers are planning to leave town for a recess scheduled for next week. 
 
 House Republican leaders, who lost control of their caucus on Wednesday, worked furiously on Thursday to round up votes for the revised version of the stopgap bill. 
 
 They prevailed by halving the number of defections from their ranks. On Wednesday, 48 Republicans voted against the bill. On Friday, just 24 voted no. Representative David Dreier, Republican of California and chairman of the Rules Committee, said it had been "an ugly, messy, difficult process." The purpose of the change, he said, was to prevent "another boondoggle like Solyndra." 
 
 The new version of the House bill, like the original, would have partially offset the cost of disaster assistance by cutting a separate Energy Department loan program that promotes development of energy-efficient cars. This cut infuriates Democrats in the House and the Senate, who say the program is creating thousands of jobs at automakers and auto parts suppliers. 
 
 "The bill was wrong yesterday, the bill is wrong today," Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said Thursday night on the House floor. "Virtually nothing has changed." 
 
 The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Republicans were offering "the same old warmed-over stew that was rejected" on Wednesday. 
 
 Speaker John A. Boehner had solicited the views of his colleagues at a meeting of the House Republican Conference, where lawmakers expressed frustration at the setback they suffered Wednesday on the bill to provide $3.65 billion in disaster relief.
– Congress gave final approval early Friday to a giant $1.3 trillion spending bill that ends the budget battles for now, but only after late obstacles skirted close to another shutdown as conservatives objected to big outlays on Democratic priorities at a time when Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. Senate passage shortly after midnight averted a third federal shutdown this year, an outcome both parties wanted to avoid. But in crafting a sweeping deal that busts budget caps, they've stirred conservative opposition and set the contours for the next funding fight ahead of the midterm elections, the AP reports. "Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses—and parties," tweeted Sen. Rand Paul. "No one has read it," he added of the 2,200-page bill that was released the night before. "Congress is broken." The House easily approved the measure Thursday, 256-167, a bipartisan tally that underscored the popularity of the compromise, which funds the government through September. It beefs up military and domestic programs, delivering federal funds to every corner of the country. But action stalled in the Senate as conservatives ran the clock in protest. Then, an unusual glitch arose when Sen. James Risch, an Idaho Republican, wanted to remove a provision to rename a forest in his home state after the late Cecil Andrus, a four-term Democratic governor. Once the opponents relented, the Senate began voting, clearing the package by a 65-32 vote a full day before Friday's midnight deadline to fund the government. (A deal to help "Dreamers" didn't make it into the bill.)