WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military will get an infusion of money to buy urgently needed materials for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan under an $82 billion bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday that is headed for President Bush's signature.

Congress completed work on the "emergency" spending bill when the Senate voted unanimously for a compromise measure, following passage by the House of Representatives last week.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, said the legislation was "of utmost importance to our troops who are deployed in the war on terror and for our allies in the world."

Congress has been under pressure from the Bush administration to promptly approve the spending bill. Without the money, the Pentagon said it would run out of funding for some war accounts by the middle of this month.

Of the $82 billion, $76 billion would be funneled to the Pentagon to help it buy armor for soldiers and combat vehicles, ammunition, missiles and other war materials. The money also would be used to increase death benefits for families of soldiers killed in combat.

The "emergency" spending bill also provides $907 million in relief stemming from December's Indian Ocean tsunami and distributes foreign aid to several countries.

While Democrats unanimously supported the measure, they complained that Bush had failed to give Congress long-range estimates of the cost of the Iraq war or identified ways to offset those costs.

"We should not continue to fund the war through ad hoc emergency supplemental bills that are funneled through the Congress quickly when our troops are running out of funding," said Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record), a West Virginia Democrat.

The legislation calls on the Pentagon to give Congress estimates of war costs by assessing the number of American troops that will be deployed in Iraq through next year.

The Bush administration has argued that future war costs and troop strength will depend on conditions in Iraq that are impossible to predict.

IMMIGRATION, SECURITY TRAINING

While the Pentagon said the $76 billion will carry combat operations at least through Sept. 30, it has not said how much additional war funds will be needed beyond that date.

Including the newly approved money, the United States will have spent nearly $300 billion since late 2001 fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. About two-thirds of that was for Iraq.

Democrats also criticized immigration law changes that were attached to the bill that make it harder for foreigners to seek asylum in the United States and denies all illegal aliens driver's licenses.

The Bush administration will also get $592 million to build a new embassy in Iraq. It would be the largest U.S. compound in the world.

The measure would provide more funding for training Iraqi security forces, which Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) said "is a key element of a successful strategy to stabilize Iraq and withdraw American forces."

Funds also would be dispatched to help Haiti with elections, to give economic assistance to Palestinians and for more food aid.

To strengthen domestic security, Congress approved funds for hiring more U.S. border patrol agents and to build security fences along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Some senators complained that the legislation did not do enough to strengthen northern border security or hire enough additional border patrol agents.