The planned early morning vote on the $626 billion defense spending bill and other must-pass items resulted from an acrimonious struggle between Democrats determined to pass a health care bill this year and Republicans intent on using delaying tactics to stop them.
Other votes were likely Saturday, including on a procedural test that would require Democrats to rally 60 votes behind the measure. Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an an Orthodox Jew who caucuses with Democrats, was back in Connecticut to celebrate the Sabbath with his family.
That would require at least one Republican to support the measure. The GOP had failed at a filibuster as Republicans sought to slow progress on heath care. Democrats control the chamber with 60 votes.
Democrats were confident, however, that they would get enough support from Republicans unwilling to cause a possible Pentagon cash crisis.
The defense bill itself, which contains $128 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a 3.4 percent pay raise for the military, enjoyed wide support.
But there was GOP discontent over the Democratic decision to use the bill as the engine to carry several short-term extensions of programs set to expire because of the failure of Congress to deal with them separately.
Those include two-month extensions of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, health care subsidies for those out of work, highway and transit funding, three provisions of the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act and legislation shielding doctors from a steep cut in Medicare payments.
"The Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate held this bill for the troops captive," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "They knew that at the end of the year, they would stuff unrelated, must-pass legislation, which has nothing to do with the Department of Defense, or the men and women in the military ... so they could get it passed."
Democrats scolded Republicans for forcing a 1 a.m. vote Friday to end a GOP-led filibuster and then requiring the full 30 hours, under Senate rules, before a final vote could be staged. Republicans have acknowledged they will use every means possible to stop the health care bill from coming to a final vote this year.
Republicans are "using the military, the soldiers, as pawns in this political game," said Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska.
"We know that we are upon the holiday season here, although here in this chamber, it certainly doesn't feel that way," commented Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. "There is no sense of giving and sharing and the general cooperation and cheeriness that comes at least in my family with the holiday season."
