The impressive vote demonstrated sweeping support for paying for troops fighting overseas. The path to that point, however, was poisoned with partisanship as Republicans sought to derail the measure in an effort to stretch out action on health care past Christmas.

“Senate Republicans have made us jump through every procedural hurdle just to have this vote and threatened to block funding for our troops — all in order to delay us from debating health care reform,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid. “It is incomprehensible that Republicans would even threaten to stop funding our troops and helping those who are struggling.”

Just four Republicans joined with Democrats on an important test requiring 60 votes. Confident that Republicans such as Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi would provide votes, Democratic leaders gave the OK for Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent and Orthodox Jew who caucuses with Democrats, to go home for the eighth night of Hanukkah.

The defense bill itself, which contains $128 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a 3.4 percent pay raise for the military, enjoyed wide support.

But there was Republican discontent over the Democratic decision to use the bill as the engine to carry several short-term extensions of programs set to expire because of the failure of Congress to deal with them separately.

Those include two-month extensions of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, health care subsidies for those out of work, highway and transit funding, three provisions of the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act and legislation shielding doctors from a steep cut in payments through Medicare, the federal program to provide health care to the elderly.