WASHINGTON -- The House on Thursday narrowly passed a $1.1 trillion spending package that would fund most government operations for the fiscal year after a rancorous debate that reflected the new power held by Republicans and the disarray among Democrats in the aftermath of the midterm elections.
The accord was reached in a 219-206 vote amid last-minute brinkmanship and bickering that has come to mark one of the capital's most polarized eras. The legislation now heads to the Senate, which is expected to pass it in the coming days.
The split in the Democratic Party dramatically came into view when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader and one of Obama's most loyal supporters, broke with the administration over a provision in the bill that would roll back regulation of the Dodd-Frank Act, which Pelosi said was a giveaway to big banks whose practices helped fuel the Great Recession. She spoke on the House floor in the early afternoon, asking Democrats not to vote for the bill.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were pressed to make a furious round of phone calls to try to persuade wavering Democrats, while House Speaker John A. Boehner worked to get more Republican votes.
The public support of the bill by the White House - which came just as Pelosi was making her speech on the House floor opposing it - was a rare public rebuke of the minority leader and infuriated many of her loyalists.
With an opportunity to return to a more conventional legislative process - funding the government for a fiscal year rather than for months at a time - Republican leaders had thought they had sufficient bipartisan support to pass the bill. The adopted measure funds the government through Sept. 30, 2015.
But an early sign of the headwinds facing legislation came around noon, when the deal barely cleared a procedural hurdle to allow a vote. In several tense minutes on the House floor, support to move forward on the package seesawed, with Democrats shouting "Call the vote" and Republicans holding it open until they were able to persuade two lawmakers to switch their votes.
With no Democrats supporting the move to bring the legislation to a vote, Republican Reps. Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana gave their leadership the final votes to clear that obstacle.
House Democrats - who were already trying to strike a delicate balance - found their calculation complicated by the White House, which released a pre-emptive signal that Obama would sign the bipartisan legislation if it made it out of Congress.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the administration agreed with congressional Democrats who were angry about several provisions that affect financial regulations and others that would allow larger political contributions to parties during federal campaigns. But he called the funding bill "a compromise" and said passage of the legislation would be good for the economy and would bolster some of the president's priorities, including consumer protection, early childhood education and the fight against climate change.
In a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic leadership Thursday morning, resistance to the package hardened and Pelosi began to stoke the opposition.
On Thursday afternoon, right before the vote, the House unexpectedly called a recess, as both sides huddled to determine whether they had the necessary votes to push the bill through - or, in the case of some Democrats, to block it.
Postponing action on the spending bill until next year is not ideal for either party. Republicans are eager to get the package behind them so they can start 2015 with a fresh slate for their agenda. And while Democrats found some provisions of the spending bill objectionable, the package was negotiated on a bipartisan basis and they would probably be forced into greater concessions next year.
Not everyone on the right was happy with the deal, either. Some House Republicans thought Boehner did not go far enough in fighting Obama over his executive action last month to defer the deportation of as many as 5 million unauthorized immigrants. The spending deal would fund the Department of Homeland Security - the agency primarily assigned to carry out the president's immigration policy - only through February, at which point Republicans will control both chambers of Congress and have the votes to try to curtail Obama's action.
But some conservatives wanted to immediately defund the Homeland Security agency, despite the risk of a partial government shutdown.
The liberal base of the Democratic Party, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, also found itself in an unlikely alliance with the tea party wing of the Republican Party. Both opposed the Wall Street bailout of 2008 and fear that the spending measure would not only provide a bounty for big banks but could also help cause another economic crisis. Last year, 70 House Democrats voted for a bill that included the very change to the Dodd-Frank regulations that their leadership now opposes.
"Who does Congress work for?" Warren asked, speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, as she urged House Democrats to vote against the bill. "Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?"
For Boehner and Pelosi, the lead-up to Thursday's vote also demonstrated the strengths and limitations of their conferences.
Boehner displayed a willingness to buck his party's more conservative members - as well as vocal outside groups - by passing the bill with the help of Democratic votes.
And Pelosi and her leadership team again reminded voters that House Republicans have often found themselves forced to rely on Democratic votes to pass crucial legislation, from the deal to reopen the government last year after a 16-day shutdown to relief for Hurricane Sandy.
"You cannot ask Democrats to put a bill over the top when it includes provisions that Democrats do not like," said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, a member of the Democratic leadership. "This bill is a one-two punch at middle-class voters. It weakens financial regulation on big banks and rewards Congress for doing so by increasing donation limits of big donors. This is exactly why middle-class voters have a contempt of Congress."
Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, supported much of the bill, but criticized the increase in limits on contributions to political parties. She linked that provision to efforts by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Boehner.
"The Reid-Boehner provision to increase by tenfold the limits on contributions to political parties is excessive and also does not belong on this bill," Lowey said on the House floor.
But Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the campaign finance change had been negotiated with Senate Democrats.
"Democrats in the Senate consented to it and, I suspect, participated in it," Cole said.