Washington - US President Barack Obama on Friday signed a bill to fund the government until December 16, the White House said, after it was passed by Congress the day before in a rare demonstration of bipartisan cooperation.
The bill will allow the government to keep running when current funding expires on Saturday.
Its orderly passage by lawmakers was in sharp contrast to the brinkmanship displayed earlier in the year that took the government to the brink of a shutdown, as Republicans and Democrats fought over the scale of federal spending.
Lawmakers are still debating how to cut the budget deficit and a special congressional Super Committee must lay out a plan by November 23 to lower the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, or risk painful automatic cuts from January 2013.