Policy prescriptions, including those to ease standards on school lunch content and the Environmental Protection Agency's jurisdiction over some bodies of water, have been more contentious than the negotiations over money. Cultural conservatives in the House and Senate were also pressing to include a "conscience clause" for employers who say funding contraception violates their religious beliefs.

"Nobody here is disagreeing on nutrition in school lunches," said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. "It's just that sometimes people carrying out your wishes are so overzealous they go beyond what you were asking."

Republicans maintain that efforts by the first lady and congressional Democrats to improve school nutrition by reducing the sodium content and increasing the percentage of whole grains in school lunches have become onerous for beleaguered school cafeterias. The eased school lunch standards are "about pace and flexibility," Mr. Cole said.

Meantime, conservatives on and off Capitol Hill were growing more leery as lawmakers tried to stuff the spending plan with other, only marginally related measures. Lawmakers were considering add-ons to extend federal terrorism risk insurance for private developers and to shore up the ailing federal pension regulator, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

The $1 trillion spending bill would fund almost all the government through September 2015 but keep the Department of Homeland Security open only through February to keep pressure on the president over his executive action to defer deportation of as many as five million illegal immigrants.

Military projects were given the benefit of the doubt in a package that will bear the fingerprints of Republican negotiators more than any other spending legislation has since the party took control of the House. For instance, seven reserve Awacs surveillance planes the administration wanted to cut from the Air Force Reserves will be saved at Tinker Air Force Base in Mr. Cole's district.

Conservative groups like Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, were pressuring Republicans to vote against the measure, saying it did too little to combat Mr. Obama's increasingly bold use of executive authority. That, in turn, strengthened the Democrats' hands, since with Republican defections it will take Democratic votes to secure a majority to pass the bill.