Washington: The US Senate on early Friday passed a bipartisan, two-year budget deal that boosts federal spending by $80 billion, reduces a government shutdown threat and raises the debt ceiling through the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The measure provides lawmakers some fiscal breathing room through the 2016 presidential election after years of bruising spending fights.

Negotiated in secret between then-speaker of the House John Boehner and the White House, the bill passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday and now goes to Obama for his signature.

The measure now moves to President Barack Obama for signing into law before a 3 November deadline, when the Treasury Department has said it would exhaust the last of its borrowing capacity and begin to run short on funds to meet US payment obligations.

The opposition was strong in the Senate, and White House hopeful Republican Senator Rand Paul left the campaign trail and returned to the Capitol to criticize the deal as excessive Washington spending.

Another Republican presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, speaking on the Senate floor late on Thursday, complained that Republican majorities had given Obama a ‘diamond-encrusted, glow-in-the-dark Amex card’ for government spending.

The agreement raises the government debt ceiling until March 2017, removing the threat of an unprecedented national default that would have come in a few days. At the same time it sets the budget of the government through the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years and eases punishing spending caps by providing $80bn more for military and domestic programs, paid for with a hodgepodge of spending cuts and revenue increases touching areas from tax compliance to spectrum auctions.

The deal averts a looming shortfall in the social security disability trust fund that threatened to slash benefits, and heads off an unprecedented increase in Medicare premiums for outpatient care for about 15 million beneficiaries.

The promise of more money for the military ensured support from defense hawks like Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, while additional funds for domestic programs pleased Democrats.

Obama and Democratic allies like House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California were big winners in the talks, but Republican leaders cleared away political land mines confronting the party on the eve of 2016 campaigns to win back the White House and maintain its grip on the Senate.

The measure leaves a clean slate for new Speaker Paul Ryan as he begins his leadership of the House.

Obama had repeatedly said he would not negotiate budget concessions in exchange for increasing the debt limit, though he did agree to package the debt and budget provisions.

‘I am as frustrated by the refusal of this administration to even engage on this [debt limit] issue,’ said finance committee chairman Orrin Hatch. ‘However the president’s refusal to be reasonable and do his job when it comes to our debt is no excuse for Congress failing to do its job and prevent a default.’

The budget relief lifts caps on the appropriated spending passed by Congress each year by $50bn in 2016 and $30bn in 2017, evenly divided between defence and domestic. Another $16bn or so would come each year in the form of inflated war spending, evenly split between the defence and state departments.

Cuts include curbs on Medicare payments for outpatient services provided by certain hospitals and an extension of a two percentage point cut in Medicare payments to doctors through the end of a 10-year budget. There is also a drawdown from the strategic petroleum reserve and savings reaped from a justice department fund for crime victims that involves assets seized from criminals.