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. 
 
 Follow Mascaro on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LisaMascaro and Fram at https://twitter.com/AsFram ||||| Congress approved a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, but failed to complete work on an $81-billion disaster aid package to help California, Gulf Coast states and Puerto Rico recover from wildfires and hurricanes, as lawmakers scrambled Thursday to wrap up business before a Christmas break. 
 
 The stopgap measure continues federal operations for a few more weeks, setting up another deadline for Jan. 19. But it left undone a long list of priorities that members of both parties had hoped to finish this year. 
 
 The House approved the spending bill, 231 to 188, with 14 Democrats joining a majority of the chamber’s Republicans. The Senate quickly followed, voting 66 to 32 to avert a federal shutdown Friday, with 30 Democrats opposed, including both California senators, largely because the bill failed to resolve the fate of the young immigrants known as Dreamers. ​​​ 
 
 The disaster aid package, the largest in U.S. history, ran into trouble. It passed the House, 251 to 169, on a bipartisan vote, but was blocked in the Senate, where it required 60 votes, under pressure from two directions. 
 
 Conservative groups opposed the disaster measure for increasing spending too much, and Democrats said it was insufficient, especially for hard-hit Puerto Rico. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky decided not to bring the measure up for a vote. 
 
 Lawmakers plan to try again in the new year. 
 
 The stop-gap spending bill would fund three more months of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which provides insurance for nearly 9 million children nationwide. Congress has been deadlocked on a longer-term renewal of the popular program, and several states are on the verge of running out of money to keep it going. 
 
 The bill would also extend for a few weeks the National Security Agency’s legal authority for domestic surveillance of emails, which is set to expire at the end of the month. The debate over major reforms in the program would be punted, along with many other issues, into the new year. 
 
 Among the unresolved issues is protection for the Dreamers, who face the threat of deportation starting in March because of President Trump’s decision to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which allowed them to stay and work in the U.S. 
 
 Gaining a permanent legislative fix for the Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children, was a top priority for Democrats, some of whom had promised to oppose any year-end spending bill that did not include it. 
 
 More than 1,000 Dreamers and advocates continued protests and lawmaker visits Thursday at the Capitol. In the end, moderate Democrats said they would not risk a government shutdown at this point over the issue. Party leaders promised to fight out the issue in January. 
 
 “There’s a lot of justifiable anger and disappointment that the Dream Act didn’t pass before the holidays, but we remain optimistic that we’re going to get it done,” said Frank Sharry, executive director at America's Voice, an immigrant advocacy organization. 
 
 Passage of both the year-end spending bill and the disaster aid package has been uncertain all week as the Republican majority, particularly in the House, fought over priorities. Defense hawks pushed unsuccessfully for a big boost in military spending. Conservatives opposed the disaster package unless it included offsetting cuts to other programs. 
 
 In the House, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) appealed to GOP lawmakers to capitalize on the unified front they had shown in passing the tax cut bill this week, hoping to end the year on a political high note. 
 
 “Let’s stand together, be a team,” Ryan urged lawmakers in a private meeting in the Capitol basement, according to a person present in the room who was not authorized to speak on the record. Ryan reminded bickering lawmakers that their divisions only served up opportunities for Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, to leverage their votes for their own priorities. 
 
 Trump echoed that message in a morning tweet urging passage of what’s called a continuing resolution: "House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, don’t let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!" 
 
 House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) implored colleagues to support the disaster aid measure. 
 
 “Here and now, right before Christmas, don’t vote against aid,” he said. “What we do here and now, it has consequences.” 
 
 The huge disaster aid package signals what experts have warned will be greater expenses for covering natural calamities as the climate changes. 
 
 It included $4.4 billion California sought for wildfires earlier this season, but does not include recovery money for the devastating Thomas fire, among the biggest ever recorded. Congressional leaders expect to consider more money for the costs of that fire in 2018. 
 
 Even so, conservative groups warned lawmakers to vote against it. 
 
 “Congress is trying to ram through a huge spending bill with little warning, claiming that offsets are not needed because it's an ‘emergency,’ ” said the conservative Club for Growth. “This profligate spending needs to stop.” 
 
 The spending measure will keep most government operations running at existing levels, with some slight boosts for the military — including construction of a missile field in Alaska that is intended to boost defenses against the threat of an attack by North Korea — but not the big increase sought by defense hawks. 
 
 CHIP will receive $2.8 billion to continue funding through March, but not the broader authorization governors and advocates have been seeking. 
 
 Republicans made good on a promise to shield Medicare and other programs from steep cuts that could result if the just-passed GOP tax plan adds to deficits, which it is expected to do. The stop-gap spending measure would waive so-called pay-as-you-go spending rules, which threatened to cause automatic cuts. 
 
 Congress has often waived that rule in the past, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) objected to waiving it again. 
 
 “Do federal deficits matter?” he asked. 
 
 Paul’s effort to block the waiver, though, was rejected, with only seven other senators, all conservative Republicans, voting with him to allow the automatic cuts. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to stave off an imminent federal government shutdown encountered obstacles in the U.S. Senate late on Thursday, despite the passage of a month-long funding bill by the House of Representatives hours earlier. 
 
 Without the injection of new money, no matter how temporary, scores of federal agencies across the United States will be forced to shut starting at midnight Friday, when existing funds expire. 
 
 The Republican-controlled House approved funding through Feb. 16 on a mostly partisan vote of 230-197, sending the stopgap bill to the Senate for consideration as President Donald Trump pushed hard for a measure to sign before Friday’s deadline. 
 
 However, a mix of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate who oppose the House bill for varying reasons left the legislation on the verge of defeat. 
 
 A bitter fight broke out on the Senate floor shortly after the House passage and was expected to continue on Friday. 
 
 That fueled speculation that Washington would either be thrown into shutdown mode or Congress would merely pass a very short spending bill - possibly for no more than a few days - to give lawmakers more time to negotiate. 
 
 Hovering over the government funding fight are November’s congressional elections, in which one-third of the 100-member Senate and all 435 House seats are up for grabs as Republicans battle to keep control of both chambers. 
 
 Complicating the effort was a demand by Democrats to attach an immigration measure to the funding bill to protect a large group of young, undocumented immigrants, known as “Dreamers.” 
 
 Trump has meanwhile continued to push to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico that many lawmakers do not want as part of any immigration deal. 
 
 ‘RISKY, RECKLESS’ 
 
 With that as a backdrop, Republican and Democratic leaders were already casting blame on each other for a shutdown that was still not a certainty. 
 
 “Senator Schumer, do not shut down the federal government ... It is risky. It is reckless. And it is wrong,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement, referring to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. 
 
 Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued a statement accusing Republicans of angling for a shutdown. 
 
 “President Trump wants to shut down the government over his cynical and misbegotten ‘big beautiful wall,’ which will be paid for by U.S. taxpayers, NOT Mexico,” Leahy said. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats were aiming to “hold the entire country hostage” by demanding that a “non-imminent problem” related to immigration be resolved immediately. 
 
 Democrats want to put the Dreamers, a group of people brought into the U.S. illegally as children, onto a pathway to citizenship and protect them from deportation. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (R) arrive at a news conference with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 18, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas 
 
 Trump said in September he was ending former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program shielding around 700,000 Dreamers, who are mostly from Mexico and Central America. Trump set a March 5 deadline for Congress to write legislation to protect them. 
 
 However, Democrats have argued that an average of 122 Dreamers a day have been losing their DACA protections since September, leaving them in limbo. 
 
 Schumer, responding to McConnell, said: “We all know what the problem is. It’s complete disarray on the Republican side,” referring to conflicting immigration demands floated over the past several months by the Trump administration. 
 
 McConnell has said he would not take up an immigration bill until it was clear what Trump would sign. The president rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise last week after saying he would support one in theory. 
 
 TEARY-EYED DREAMERS 
 
 Instead of passing a month-long patch to government spending, Schumer proposed a “very short-term” bill to keep the government running, which he said could spark a deal over the next few days on immigration and overall spending levels through Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year. 
 
 Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who is leading the fight on behalf of Dreamers, met a teary-eyed group of the youngsters in his offices as the Senate wrapped up its work for the night. 
 
 He later told reporters that a high-level bipartisan meeting earlier on Thursday had showed signs of promise. 
 
 Durbin said the negotiators “finally started talking about real issues, Dream Act citizenship and border security in more specific terms.” 
 
 Slideshow (13 Images) 
 
 House passage came only after conservatives secured a promise from Ryan that he would soon advance some type of legislation to bolster U.S. military readiness, satisfying their desire for increased defense spending, said Republican Representative Mark Meadows, head of the House Freedom Caucus. 
 
 The 2018 fiscal year began on Oct. 1. Congress’ inability to agree on overall funding levels has meant that the government has been operating on a series of temporary measures that mainly kept spending at the previous year’s levels. 
 
 Besides extending government funding for a month to give negotiators more time to work on a longer deal, the House’s temporary spending bill would extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for low-income families for six years. 
 
 Republicans inserted the measure in a move partly to lure Democratic support.
– 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.)