WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved a bipartisan budget accord and a Pentagon policy bill that would strengthen protections for victims of sexual assault. But as it wrapped up business for the year, it left unfinished a major piece of domestic policy — the farm bill — making it likely the law would lapse at year's end.
Republicans and Democrats hope the budget pact, which passed 332 to 94, will act as a truce in the spending battles that have paralyzed Congress for three years, and leaders in both parties sought to marginalize hard-line conservatives opposed to any compromise.
The defense measure would, in addition to strengthening protections for military victims of sexual assault, leave open the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, over President Obama's objections.
The provisions to stem the growing number of sexual assault cases are the most expansive of their kind in years. They would include rules that would prevent commanding officers from overturning verdicts.
But an agreement on the farm bill — the subject of ongoing disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over funding for food stamps, expanding crop insurance, and other issues — remained elusive. All the House could pass Thursday was a one-month extension of the law, which Senate Democrats oppose because they want an entire new bill.
Earlier, with bipartisan support in hand, House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio declared open warfare on the outside conservative groups that tried to scuttle the budget deal. For the second day in a row, he accused such groups as Club for Growth, Heritage Action, and Americans for Prosperity of reflexively opposing a reasonable plan in an effort to raise their profiles and improve their fund-raising.
He said the groups had devised the strategy of linking further government funding to the repeal of Obama's health care law, then pressing their members and House Republicans to go along, even though they knew it would shut down the government and ultimately fail.
"Are you kidding me?" the speaker shouted, denouncing opposition to the budget accord. "There comes a point where some people step over the line. When you criticize something and you have no idea what you're criticizing, it undermines your credibility."
Yet when the Senate takes up the bill, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, is likely to vote against it, along with virtually all of the Republican senators who are contending with Tea Party challenges next year or are wooing conservatives for a potential presidential bid.
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, declared his opposition.
"Much of the spending increase in this deal has been justified by increased fees and new revenue," Sessions said. "In other words, it's a fee increase to fuel a spending increase — rather than reducing deficits."
By most analyses, the deal, struck by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, is a modest plan to mitigate the impact of across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, that went into effect in March and to slightly lower the projected growth of the budget deficit over the next decade.
The legislation would also extend current Medicare payment rates for three months, staving off a cut of more than 20 percent to health care providers. That would allow lawmakers to try to come up with a more permanent "doctors' fix" to overwrite a deficit-reduction measure that neither party has been able to stomach for more than a decade.
All nine members of Massachusetts' House delegation, including Katherine Clark of Melrose, voted for the budget. It was Clark's first day as a representative after she handily won the seat formerly held by Edward Markey in a special election earlier this week.
The budget fight has turned into a donnybrook between congressional leaders and Tea Party-aligned groups and lawmakers. It pits the House Republican leadership against the Tea Party wing and one potential Republican presidential candidate, Ryan, against two others who oppose his deal, Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
"It is clear that the conservative movement has come under attack on Capitol Hill," 50 conservative activists wrote to congressional Republicans.
Democratic leaders took heart in what they saw as a turning point in their battle with uncompromising conservatives.
"The benefits of this agreement will go far beyond the actual agreement itself," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York. "What we have seen in the Senate over the last several months, and now in the House, led by the courage of Congressman Ryan, is mainstream conservatives standing up to the hard right and saying: 'This is no good for America. This is no good for the Republican Party. We're not going to follow the Tea Party, like Thelma and Louise, over a cliff.' "