The United States House of Representatives has passed a stop-gap bill to keep the federal government operating.
The bill is designed to ease deep cuts across the Defence Department that came into effect on Friday.
Democrats hope to expand it to cover other departments when the bill goes to the Senate next week.
Without such legislation, federal agencies would run out of funding on 27 March.
The BBC reports the cuts are the result of a deal made in 2011. They hit both defence domestic programmes.
