Washington ? The House approved a $373 billion spending package Monday detailing how nearly every domestic agency will spend its money this year and delivering wins to President Bush on overtime pay, media ownership and other fights.

More than two months after the government’s budget year began, Republican leaders pushed the sweeping measure through, 242-176. Its fate remained uncertain in the Senate, where Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was leaning toward delaying a vote until late January because of opposition and a reluctance by senators, now on recess, to return to the Capitol.

The 1,182-page legislation will finance items from biomedical research to school lunches, from foreign aid to federal subsidies to the District of Columbia. An amalgam of seven bills that are supposed to be approved separately, the package covers 11 Cabinet departments and scores of other agencies.

“We bring about as good a fiscally conservative bill that meets the needs of the country as we possibly could,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla.

Though written largely by the GOP, the bill was approved by 58 Democrats along with the 184 Republicans who voted for it. Voting no were 137 Democrats, 38 Republicans and 1 independent.

The bill all but groans with earmarks, or money for museums, industrial parks and other projects for home districts of lawmakers of both parties. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., top Democrat on the Appropriations panel, said there were more than 7,000 of them worth more than $7.5 billion, a long and ever-expanding tradition that prompted some conservative Republicans to oppose the bill.

“We seem to have no shame,” said conservative Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.

Democrats complained that the bill provided too little for schools, veterans and other programs and dictated federal policy that in many cases saw Bush prevail over congressional opposition.

These include provisions that let companies deny overtime to more white-collar workers, allow networks to own more television stations, aided Bush’s plan to let private companies do more federal work and required the FBI to destroy gun purchase applications after a day.

“Let the executive department know that this is a democracy,” complained No. 2 Democratic leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. “It is not a kingdom. It is not a dictatorship.”

Republicans said the bill, which controls one-sixth of the $2.2 trillion federal budget, crowned an effort for them to control spending. Young said the bill’s price tag would have been even higher had his panel included more of lawmakers’ requests for earmarks, which he said exceeded $50 billion.