The battle marked the third time this year that the sharply divided Congress had pushed the U.S. government to the brink.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass Thursday a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown, a top Republican aide said, as members of both parties drew fire for creating another high-stakes political drama. The spending measure will give time for the Republican-led House next week to give anticipated final congressional approval to a Senate-passed bill to fund the government through Nov. 18, the aide said Tuesday.

Leaders in the Democratic-led Senate reached the bipartisan deal Monday after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it could get through the rest of this week, to the end of the fiscal year, without additional funds. This helped end a stalemate over whether emergency-relief had to be offset with spending cuts.

The battle marked the third time this year that the sharply divided Congress had pushed the U.S. government to the brink. Earlier fights took the government to the edge of a shutdown in April and the edge of default in August, drawing outrage and ridicule from the public and helping plunge Congress' approval rating to a record low of 12 percent.