The House on Wednesday narrowly approved a short-term, $290 billion increase in federal borrowing power, setting the stage for a major fight over national fiscal policy in 2010. As the House finished its business for the year, lawmakers, in a rare show of bipartisanship, also easily approved a $626 billion Pentagon spending measure, wrapping up the annual spending bills almost three months behind schedule. The Pentagon measure, which passed on a vote of 395-34, pays for continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also included short extensions of the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation enacted after Sept. 11, and several other expiring laws and programs as well as two more months in jobless pay and health care for the unemployed. The interlude of legislative cooperation was brief. Members of the House and Senate failed to come to terms on extending the federal estate tax, which is scheduled to be repealed entirely for 2010 before being reinstated at a lower threshold in 2011. Lawmakers hope to work out a more orderly transition when they return in January. In what House members hope was their last significant vote of an eventful year, a $174 billion measure intended to create jobs was approved on a surprisingly close party-line vote of 217-212. The measure would redirect $75 billion from the Wall Street bailout fund to a variety of construction and employment programs, but no similar measure is expected to be considered in the Senate until next year. Lawmakers quickly returned to partisan sniping before voting 218-214 to raise the federal debt limit, with each party blaming the other for running up the national debt over the last decade. Both the debt increase and the Pentagon measure must still be approved by the Senate, which is locked in its health care debate. The Treasury Department had sought the debt increase, saying the federal government was in danger of exceeding the legal debt limit of $12.1 trillion by Dec. 31, putting it in jeopardy of defaulting and threatening its ability to operate. 'We have the full faith and credit of the United States of America in our hands,' said Rep. Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. 'People have a political problem with raising the debt, but our country has a fiscal problem.' Republicans said the need to increase the debt reflected excessive Democratic spending and called on Congress to reduce spending instead. 'Give the gift that America deserves, a responsible federal budget,' said Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev. 'Merry Christmas to everyone.' Democrats countered that Republicans presided over deficit spending during most of the last decade as the federal government turned a surplus at the end of the Clinton administration into a deficit during the tenure of President George W. Bush. They said Republicans recklessly cut taxes while adding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the deficit. 'I don't know how you could have voted for the war in Iraq and vote now not to pay the bill,' said Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Mass. and a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee. If approved by the Senate, the debt increase is expected to be sufficient to carry the government through Feb. 11. In the interim, Democrats say they will try come to an agreement among the White House, congressional leaders and centrist Democrats in both houses who are pressing for an independent commission with the power to recommend spending cuts and tax increases for congressional approval. Congressional Democrats had intended to seek an increase in the national debt ceiling of $1.8 trillion, enough to carry the government through next November and avoid another vote on the politically treacherous topic before the elections. But party deficit hawks balked and said they would support a substantial increase only if they were given a vote on the deficit panel and other concessions. Rep. John S. Tanner, D-Tenn., and a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said the short-term increase in the debt limit amounted to Congress' 'hitting the pause button' while allowing lawmakers time to work out a way to tackle the deficit. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., and another Blue Dog, said Congress had to come up with a new approach to enforcing fiscal responsibility. 'We don't have the will in the United States Congress to discipline ourselves,' he said. 'We have proven that over the years.' But Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top members of Congress have strongly resisted the idea of a independent commission, saying it cedes too much of the responsibility that should belong to Congress. One compromise proposal centers on a commission created by executive order. Democrats on both sides of the issue say they will try to find a resolution quickly, and President Barack Obama is due to present his own deficit-reduction plan early next year as Democrats try to neutralize spending as a political issue in the midterm elections. Members of Congress loathe voting to raise the debt limit since it allows opponents to paint them as favoring added spending and the majority party typically has to muster the votes to protect the nation's credit. No Republican voted for the increase approved Wednesday, and 39 Democrats also voted no. Besides extending the Patriot Act, the Pentagon measure delayed for two months a scheduled cut in Medicare payments to doctors and extended for two months programs covering food stamps, transportation construction, flood insurance and small-business loans, among other things. 