House approves minibus, continuing resolution, sends to Senate

The House easily passed a 2012 "minibus" spending bill Thursday afternoon that also contains a continuing spending resolution through December 16, and sent it to the Senate for passage, likely on Friday.

The bill was approved in a 298-121 vote in which more Democrats supported it than Republicans. Among Democrats, 165 supported the bill and 20 opposed it, while 133 Republicans supported it and 101 opposed it.

The hour-long debate on the bill was unremarkable, except for the general support for the bill from members of both parties that was at least in part due to the simple need to pass the continuing resolution before the end of this week. Republicans praised the bill for meeting the spending cap limits agreed to in the Budget Control Act, while Democrats said the bill restores funding to some areas that the House had cut, such as food safety and nutrition for women and children.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) noted that the bill, H.R. 2112, is the first spending bill that is the product of a House-Senate conference since 2009.

Democrats grumbled on the edges of the debate about the need for more funding for housing in the U.S., and earlier in the day, blasted language that would allow tomato paste used in pizza to be treated as a vegetable, despite recent efforts by the Agriculture Department to prevent this.

Passage of the bill by Congress will avoid a government shutdown on Friday.