Obama signs $1 trillion spending bill

Without fanfare, President Obama signed the $1 trillion 2012 omnibus spending bill into law on Friday.

The bill passed both houses of Congress on Dec. 16, but the government has been operating on a short-term continuing resolution that was set to run out at midnight Friday. The 2012 spending process is now complete.

The 1,200-page omnibus was being formally "enrolled" in the meantime, as aides proofread it and put it onto parchment paper.

The bill funds all parts of the federal government except for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the science agencies. These were funded by a smaller bill that passed Congress in November.

The base bill clocks in at $915 billion. There is an additional $115 billion for the Pentagon to fight wars overseas. 

President Obama signed a separate measure on Friday providing an additional $8.6 billion in disaster aid. The House wanted the disaster aid offset by spending cuts, but the Senate rejected a third House-passed bill that would have provided the offsets.

The signing of the spending bill caps a year of contentious spending battles that saw a near-government shutdown in April and a debt-rating downgrade in August as the U.S. nearly defaulted on its obligations when Congress threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

That debt-ceiling debacle resulted in an agreement on spending caps that greatly smoothed passage of the omnibus.

The bill was not without incident, however, and last week the White House and the GOP had a mini-standoff about policy riders in the bill. The White House was able to get a ban on family travel to Cuba removed but did not get extra funding for Wall Street reform that it had been seeking.

The White House also gave up on a provision in the bill blocking District of Columbia-funded abortions.

The House GOP needed Democrats to pass the omnibus, and 86 GOP members voted against it, saying it spends too much money.

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) hailed Obama's signature on the bill.

 "The Appropriations Committee has begun to restore its reputation as a workhorse committee, finding ways to resolve our differences without drama and quietly getting our work done," he said.

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