US Congressional negotiators late Monday unveiled a massive spending bill that would end the threat of another Government shutdown, news reports said, ahead of a deadline midnight on Wednesday.
The $1.1 trillion spending bill would fill in the blanks of a December budget agreement and fund federal agencies for the rest of the fiscal year, the reports said.
The bill follows on the bipartisan budget agreement to partially repeal sharp spending cuts known as the sequester. The bill unveiled on Monday means the Pentagon will avoid a roughly $20 billion cut set to hit on Wednesday, and domestic agencies will receive funding increases, the Washington Post reported.
Despite those increases, the bill would leave agency budgets tens of billions of dollars lower than President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats had sought.
Top congressional negotiators, who met through the weekend to nail down final details, were pleased with the outcome.
"We are pleased to have come to a fair, bipartisan agreement on funding the Government for 2014," House Appropriations Committee chairman Harold Rogers and Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Barbara A Mikulski said in a joint statement.
"Although our differences were many and our deadline short, we were able to a draft a solid piece of legislation that... keeps the Government open, and eliminates the uncertainty and economic instability of stop-gap governing". Rogers, a Republican, and Mikulski, a Democrat, warned that not everyone would like everything in it.
"But in this divided Government a critical bill such as this simply cannot reflect the wants of only one party. We believe this is a good, workable measure that will serve the American people well, and we encourage all our colleagues to support it this week.”
House and Senate leaders were preparing a temporary bill that would keep the Government open from the Wednesday deadline to the end of the weekend and give lawmakers a few days to review the new measure and move it to their respective floors for votes.
The bill would provide $1.012 trillion federal agencies. An additional $92 billion would be set aside for overseas operations, including military activity in Afghanistan and assistance for refugees fleeing the war in Syria. The bill also authorizes $6.55 billion for domestic disaster relief.
The legislation also provides continuing aid to Egypt despite a military coup there last summer.