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President Joe Biden signed a bill to fund the government for an additional week as lawmakers race to finish work on a full-year spending package before they head home for the holidays and a new Congress is sworn in.

Congress in September passed a bill to keep the government running through midnight Friday. The latest extension funds federal agencies through Dec. 23. It passed the Senate by a vote of 71-19.

“Negotiations keep trending in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work left to do and not enough time to do it, unless we extend government funding for another week,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in urging lawmakers to support the stopgap measure.

The roughly $1.7 trillion package being negotiated would finance the day-to-day operations of government agencies for the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Federal spending on programs such as Social Security and Medicare is not part of the annual appropriations process and is not included in the package.

House Republicans overwhelmingly have called for a longer-term extension into early next year so they could have a bigger role in setting spending levels for the agencies. Democrats in the House were able to advance the bill with little GOP support earlier this week.

But Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, has made the case that passing a full-year spending bill this Congress is better than the alternatives because it ensures a sizable increase in spending for defense.

“If a truly bipartisan full-year bill without poison pills is ready for final Senate passage by late next week, I’ll support it for our Armed Forces,” McConnell said Wednesday. “Otherwise, we’ll be passing a short-term continuing resolution into the new year.”

But a group of Senate Republicans criticized the process by which the larger spending bill was coming together, taking umbrage with efforts to pass a spending bill before their counterparts in the House could take control of the lower chamber in January.

“You put an important must-pass bill, in this case a spending bill without which the government will shut down, you put it right next to a scheduled recess,” said Utah Sen. Mike Lee. “The more critical and valued the recess, the more critical the threat becomes.”

Lee presented a Continuing Resolution which would fund the government through February. At that point, Republicans would have control of the House.

“It would allow Congress to approach this omnibus spending package with the kind of clear-headed thinking that is required, and not under the extortive duel threat of shutdown and missing the Christmas holidays with family,” Lee said.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who wants to reduce government spending, told Spectrum News that he does not support the idea of a spending bill – neither short-term nor long-term – that would keep spending at the same level.

“Essentially if we did a continuing resolution for 3 months, and did another 3 months and had a whole year of that, you’re spending the exact amount of money,” Paul said. “It’s too much.”

Paul presented a “6-penny plan” earlier this year which would have cut six cents from every dollar spent, save for Social Security, in an effort to cut government spending across the board. Critics say those kinds of cuts would take away funding that many rely on and see as necessary for the government to operate properly.

Paul’s plan did not get enough support to pass.

“The public thinks there is not enough compromise,” Paul said. “The reverse is actually true: Republicans want more money for the military industrial complex, Democrats want more money for the welfare industrial complex, so they both get what they want every year.”

Shelby has said the two parties were about $25 billion apart on overall spending, though they are in agreement on spending about $858 billion on defense. Lawmakers announced Tuesday night that they had reached agreement on a “framework” that should allow negotiations to be completed by next week, but they provided no details.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee, urged colleagues to vote for the extension. She said the final spending bill being negotiated “will help keep our nation and our communities safe with the certainty that we all deserve.”

The final bill is also expected to include the Biden administration’s request for another $37 billion in aid to Ukraine as well as other bipartisan priorities, including an election measure designed to prevent another Jan. 6 insurrection. The bill would make it more difficult for lawmakers to object to a particular state’s electoral votes and make clear that the constitutional role of the vice president in the proceedings is solely ministerial.