The Senate voted swiftly Monday night to kill new House legislation tying further government funding to the Republicans’ latest hit on President Obama’s health care law, sending a spending bill free of policy prescriptions back to the House less than an hour after the House approved it.

The Senate’s action, 54-46 along party lines, left House Republican leaders just two hours to find a final response before large parts of the federal government were to run out of money at midnight. By Tuesday morning, 800,000 federal workers are to be furloughed and more than a million more are to report to work with no idea when they will be paid.

“They’ve lost their minds,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said before disposing of the House bill. “They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.”