The House has passed a nearly USD 612 billion US defence policy bill despite a veto threat by President Barack Obama.
Democrats oppose it because they say the measure paves the way to cutting domestic programs later this year. Friday's vote was 269-151 for the bill, which maps next year's military and national security programmes.
A 2011 bipartisan budget deal placed caps on defense and domestic spending. The defense bill skirts those limits by putting USD 89 billion of the total into an emergency war-fighting fund exempt from the caps.
Democrats predict that Republicans won't take similar steps to protect domestic programmes in upcoming spending bills.
