Congress also sent to the president legislation to ease the threat of terrorist attack using the 11 million shipping containers entering the nation's 361 ports every year.
And legislation to convene military trials to prosecute suspected terrorists cleared its final hurdle in the House.
Much work was left undone when Congress adjourned, after a legislative year that has been marked by sharp partisanship and the failure of Congress to agree on major lobbying reform and immigration legislation.
The action on the security bills gives Republicans at least one major selling point as they try to persuade voters to keep them in power.
Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said that in the weeks before the election Republicans must emphasize that they are the better party to fight the war on terrorism.
``We're going to have to get the message out and we have to get it out aggressively over the next 41 days to do well, but I believe we can," Frist said
Members of Congress will return after the Nov. 7 election for a lame - duck session during which they will have to pass bills dealing with domestic spending for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
So far, the only spending bills completed are the defense bill and a $35 billion bill for homeland security that contains $1.2 billion to begin construction of fences and other barriers along the US-Mexican border, plus money for jails to detain illegal immigrants and hire 1,500 more border agents.
Legislation validating President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program will have to wait for a postelection session colored by the November results. So will a bill to open the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas rigs.
Included in the defense budget: stopgap spending to keep agencies open through Nov. 17 if their funding bills haven't passed. Those include measures funding veterans' health care, education, health research, anticrime programs, among many others.
The final act of the Senate was approval of a companion defense bill including a 2.2 percent military pay raise, and setting policy on weapons spending and research programs considered vital to national security. The House passed the bill Friday by a bipartisan 398-to-23 vote.
