By ALAN FRAM

| The Associated Press

WASHINGTON • Congress on Friday approved legislation renewing a payroll tax cut for 160 million workers and jobless benefits for millions more, backing the main items on President Barack Obama’s jobs agenda in a rare burst of Washington bipartisanship.

The Senate approved the $143 billion measure on a bipartisan 60-36 vote minutes after the House approved it by a sweeping 293-132 vote. Obama is expected to sign it shortly after returning from a West Coast fundraising swing.

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At a glance

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Deal trims maximum jobless benefits to 73 weeks

Millions of Americans will continue to receive long-term unemployment benefits under legislation approved Friday in Congress, but the scope of the program is being scaled back to cover fewer people by the end of the year.

The measure, which also extends a payroll tax cut through the rest of 2012, begins to wind down the program of extended federal jobless benefits that Congress first approved at the height of the recession. The bill reduces the current maximum 99 weeks of benefits to 73 weeks by September. For those in all but about a dozen of the highest unemployment states, benefits will be cut off after 63 weeks.

The benefits are for people out of work more than six months. The program has provided checks to about 18 million out-of-work Americans who exhausted the 26 weeks of state jobless benefits.

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Under the bill, workers would continue to receive a 2 percentage point increase in their paychecks, and people out of work for more than six months would keep jobless benefits averaging about $300 a week, steps that Obama says will help support a fragile recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

It would also head off a steep cut in reimbursements for physicians who treat Medicare patients.

The tax cuts, jobless coverage and higher doctors’ payments would all continue through 2012.

Passage of the legislation hands Obama a victory over objections from many Republicans who oppose it but were eager to wipe the issue from the election-year agenda.

It also clears away a political headache for House Republicans, who blocked a two-month extension of the tax cut and jobless coverage in late December, only to retreat quickly under a buzz saw of opposition from conservative and GOP leaders from around the country.

With that history, Republicans seemed ready to get the fight behind them and change the subject for the rest of this election year.

"We’re dumb, but we’re not stupid," McCain told reporters after he voted. "We did not want to repeat the debacle of last December. It’s not that complicated."

"I think everyone learned a lot from the end-of-the-year stuff," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Everything doesn’t have to be a fight." Republicans, Reid added, have "opposed virtually everything we’ve tried to do."

"I think they came to the conclusion that that hasn’t worked out very well," Reid said.

Opposition was stronger in the Senate, where Republicans voted against the measure by a 2-1 margin. Five Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., opposed the measure, while 14 Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, backed it.

In the House, however, a solid majority of Republicans backed the measure despite reservations about its $89 billion impact on the budget deficit over the coming decade.

And Republicans said the final deal, significantly changed from a tea party-backed measure that passed in December, was the best Republicans could get.

"We don’t control Washington. Democrats still control Washington — they control the Senate, and they control the White House," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the top House negotiator on the measure. "A divided government must still govern." Camp cited stricter job search requirements for people receiving unemployment benefits and other reforms to the program as wins for conservatives.

But many GOP lawmakers were upset that the measure would add to the federal deficit and doubted that it would do much to boost the economy. Another concern was that it cuts a payroll tax that’s dedicated to paying Social Security benefits. Deficit spending would make up for the lost revenue, but some lawmakers fear it would chip away at Washington’s commitment to the program.

"I cannot and I will not support legislation that extends the payroll tax holiday without paying for it," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga. "This will add $100 billion to the deficit and it will create an even greater shortfall within the Social Security trust fund that already has over $100 billion shortfall just in the last two years."