WASHINGTON, DC, USA (AP) — The Senate passed legislation last night to avert a US debt default and end a Government shutdown, a bipartisan deal set along President Barack Obama’s strict terms that left Republicans little to show for the epic political drama that threatened to rattle the world economy.

The 81-18 vote sent the measure to the House of Representatives, which was expected to pass it late in the evening. Obama pledged to sign it “immediately” after the House vote.

The bill would reopen the Government through January 15 and permit the Treasury to borrow normally through February 7 or perhaps a month longer. It includes nothing for Republicans demanding to eradicate or scale back Obama’s signature health care overhaul.

Congress faces a deadline of 11:59 pm today to raise the Government’s borrowing authority or risk a default on its obligations.

“We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win,” conceded House Speaker John Boehner as lawmakers lined up to vote on the bill.

The stock market surged earlier yesterday at the prospect of an end to the crisis that had threatened to shake confidence in the US economy overseas.

More than two million federal workers — those who had remained on the job and those who had been furloughed — would be paid under the agreement.

Boehner and the rest of the top Republican leadership told their rank and file they would vote for the measure. But he vowed Republicans were not giving up on the fight to bring down US debt and cripple “Obamacare”, as the president’s signature health care overhaul is known.

“Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president’s health care law will continue,” Boehner said in a statement.

Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, thanked Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, for working with him to end what had become one of the nastiest partisan battles in recent Washington history.

“This is a time for reconciliation,” Reid said.

A long line of polls charted a steep decline in public approval for Republicans in the course of what Republican Senator John McCain pronounced a “shameful episode” in US history.

The deal would end the bitter stand-off for now, giving both parties time to cool off and come up with a broader budget plan or risk repeating the damaging cycle again in the new year.

The crisis began on October 1 with a partial shutdown of the federal Government after House Republicans refused to accept a temporary funding measure unless Obama agreed to defund or delay his health care law. It escalated when House Republicans also refused to move on needed approval for raising the amount of money the Treasury can borrow to pay US bills, raising the spectre of a catastrophic default. Obama vowed repeatedly not to pay a “ransom” in order to get Congress to pass normally routine legislation.

The hard-right tea party faction of House Republicans, urged on by conservative Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, had seen both deadlines as weapons that could be used to gut Obama’s Affordable Care Act, designed to provide tens of millions of uninsured Americans with coverage. The Democrats remained united against any Republican threat to Obama’s signature programme, and Republicans in the House could not muster enough votes to pass their own plan to end the impasse.

McConnell said the time had come to back away for now from Republican efforts to undermine “Obamacare”. But the feisty minority boss said Republicans had not given up on erasing it from the legislative books.