New throughout with bill text unveiled

By Richard Cowan, Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Top Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress unveiled a stopgap measure on Tuesday to keep federal agencies funded through March 14, which would avert a partial government shutdown that would otherwise begin on Saturday.

The measure would likely keep the roughly $6.2 trillion federal budget running at its current level, funding programs ranging from the military, air traffic controllers and federal regulators for areas ranging from drug safety to securities markets.

It also includes $100.4 billion in new emergency funding to help states including North Carolina and Florida recover from devastating hurricanes, as well as western wildfires and other recent disasters.

That money would include $29 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund; $21 billion for aid to farmers hit by flooding and other losses; and $10 billion in economic assistance for them, according to House of Representatives Republican leadership aides.

State and local communities would receive $12 billion in block grants and $8 billion would be earmarked for the Transportation Department's highway and road disaster relief.

Nearly $5.7 billion in new funding would go to the Pentagon's Virginia-class submarine building by General Dynamics Corp GD.N and Huntington Ingalls Industries HII.N.

Should lawmakers fail to act in time, federal agencies would enter a partial shutdown beginning on Saturday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson leads a narrow and restive 219-211 Republican majority and has repeatedly over the past year had to rely on Democratic support to pass major legislation.

Party hardliners signaled on Tuesday that they were unhappy with the bill, meaning that Johnson will once again need to reach across the aisle to pass it.

"One of the things we know very clearly is that House Democrats will be needed to pass government funding," No. 3 House Democrat Pete Aguilar said at a Tuesday press conference.

RISING DEBT

The stopgap measure is needed because Congress failed to pass its one-dozen annual appropriations bills in time for the current fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The government's "mandatory" programs, which include Social Security and Medicare retirement and healthcare benefits and represent about two-thirds of the budget, renew automatically.

That has contributed to the rising federal debt, which exceeds $36 trillion. Congress will have to address that again early next year, when a 2023 deal to extend the nation's "debt ceiling" expires. Failure could shock bond markets with potentially severe economic consequences.

Democrats had pushed for a longer bill funding the government through the end of its current fiscal year ending Sept. 30, but Republicans wanted to wait for final agreement until after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20 and their party takes its majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

Trump and congressional Republicans campaigned all year on a promise of significantly cutting the number of federal workers and proposing deep cuts to many of the government's programs.

He has created an advisory committee called the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Tesla founder Elon Musk, the world's richest person, and former presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Neither has any government experience.

Now that the temporary funding bill has been unveiled, rank-and-file members of Congress will review its details. It was unclear when the first votes on the bill, by the House, would occur. Once passed there, the Senate would aim to vote by a midnight Friday deadline, and then send it to Democratic President Joe Biden to sign into law.

Riding along in this spending bill is a one-year extension of federal farm programs, including commodity subsidies and food and nutrition benefits for low-income people. Without such an extension, prices for milk, cheese and other dairy products would skyrocket after Dec. 31.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Katharine Jackson; Additional reporting by Bo Erickson and Leah Douglas; Editing by Scott Malone, Mark Porter and Richard Chang)

((Richard.Cowan@thomsonreuters.com))