Nearly four months late, Congress on Thursday finally passed a spending plan for the 2004 fiscal year. It would raise spending on the National Institutes of Health but keep the maximum Pell Grant at the same level as last year.

The Senate voted, 65 to 28, to approve the legislation, known as an omnibus bill because it encompasses the budgets of seven government agencies, for the fiscal year that began on October 1. The House of Representatives passed the same bill in December by a vote of 242 to 176. President Bush is expected to sign the legislation.

Senate Democrats had held up the legislation because they were unhappy with compromises that Congressional leaders had made with the White House over several controversial issues unrelated to higher education, including television-station ownership, food labeling, and overtime-pay rules.

But with the White House and Republican lawmakers unwilling to make changes, the Democrats gave up trying to block the spending plan after Republicans threatened to keep the government running for the rest of the fiscal year at 2003 budget levels. If that had happened, the Democrats would have given up spending increases contained in the bill, as well as home-state projects.

"That's a tough position for anybody to be in, especially people in politics," said the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota.

In a victory for college lobbyists and student advocates, the bill would prevent the U.S. Education Department from making a proposed change in the formula that the government uses to calculate a student's need for financial aid. Budget officials at the department have estimated that 84,000 students would lose their eligibility for Pell Grants in the 2004-5 academic year if the change had gone into effect.

"We're ecstatic that no changes will be made that would negatively impact eligibility," said Becky Timmons, director of government relations at the American Council on Education.

Increases for Science

The budget includes an appropriation of $27.982-billion for the NIH, an increase of $1-billion, or 3.7 percent, over the previous year.

The agency has not yet said how many new research grants and competitively awarded renewals of grants it can support at that level in 2004. The figure, which researchers watch closely, is expected to be unveiled in early February, when President Bush releases his budget proposal for 2005.

However, some increase is expected. Mr. Bush last year proposed increasing the number for 2004 to 10,509, compared with the 10,165 projected for 2003. And the president's figures reflected an appropriation for 2004 somewhat below what Congress approved on Thursday.

The NIH figure represents the end of a period of major budget growth. Congress doubled the agency's budget from 1998 to 2003. But because of the federal deficit and other spending needs, the agency's budget is projected to grow by much smaller amounts in the next few years. The agency is the largest single source of funds for university research.

The appropriations bill also would provide the National Science Foundation with $5.6-billion, an increase of about $300-million, or 6 percent, compared with 2003. That fell short of the 15-percent increase that Congress had set as a target in 2002, as a step toward doubling that agency's budget.

The bill also provides $294-million, a 4.6-percent cut, for a program that helps medical schools increase the number of minority health professionals and educate students to work in rural and poor communities. President Bush had proposed to cut almost the entire budget for that part of the Health Professions program because of questions about its effectiveness.

Across-the-Board Cut

While celebrating the bill's ban on Education Department changes in the financial-need formula, college lobbyists were disappointed that Congress failed to increase the maximum Pell Grant from $4,050, especially after a year that saw huge increases in tuition and decreases in state appropriations for higher education.

"The fact that the Pell Grant maximum has been frozen for essentially three years ... really contributes to making college less and less accessible for more and more students," said Ms. Timmons, of the American Council on Education. "Failing to increase the maximum award, given what's going on in the economy and the states, is really a setback."

But the bill calls for increased federal spending on several other student-aid programs. The final spending package would raise the budget of the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant Program by $10-million, or 1.3 percent, to $775-million. The legislation would also increase spending on the TRIO programs for disadvantaged students by $5-million, less than 1 percent, to $837.5-million. It would raise the budget of Gear Up, which helps prepare middle-school students from low-income families for college, by $5-million, less than 1 percent, to $300-million.

The budget package would provide nearly $10-million more for programs that benefit historically black institutions and colleges that educate many Hispanic students. The legislation would raise spending on black colleges by $8.3-million, or 3 percent, to $277.5-million. Institutions that serve Hispanic students would get $94.5-million, an increase of $1.5-million.

For the second consecutive year, however, spending throughout the bill would be cut a little because lawmakers included a provision that would shave a specified amount from each program. This year that amount is 0.59 percent. Last year it was 0.65 percent.

The measure was included again to ensure that the package's total cost remained at a level supported by President Bush. As a result of the cut, some programs that received small increases would actually suffer minor reductions.

In addition, the legislation would provide the AmeriCorps program with a budget of $441-million, an increase of $15-million, or about 3.5 percent.