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The measure, however, did include a provision that docks the pay of lawmakers if one of the chambers of Congress fails to pass a budget blueprint by April 15. That provision provided House Republicans with a rationale for giving in on the debt ceiling, at least temporarily.

"It's real simple: no budget, no pay," Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said before the measure passed by 285 to 144. Eighty-six Democrats joined Republicans to make up for the 33 Republican defections.

Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, said the phrase went back to Jamestown in 1608, when Capt. John Smith established the "no work, no food" rule for the embattled colonists. Republicans have sought for months to score political points over the Senate's failure to pass a formal budget plan for more than three years.

The debt ceiling legislation — mindful of constitutional hurdles imposed by the 27th Amendment on Congressional pay — would simply impound lawmaker salaries until a budget is passed or the 113th Congress ends, whichever comes first. And it would not require the House and the Senate to come to a compromise on the two spending and tax blueprints, which are likely to be very different. That will be the really difficult task.

"The good news is that our Republican colleagues finally recognized that America must pay its bill and meet its financial obligations without conditions," said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland. "The bad news is they only want to do it for three months."

The decision by House Democrats to oppose a measure they called gimmickry forced many Republicans to vote to do something most said they would never do: lift the debt ceiling. Senate Democratic leaders shrugged off the dictate and claimed victory.

"The president stared down the Republicans. They blinked," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said he would take up and pass the House bill without changes, possibly by unanimous consent, then move quickly on a budget plan for the first time since 2009 to contrast Democratic priorities with the plan Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin plans to move through his Budget Committee.

"Democrats are eager to contrast our pro-growth, pro-middle-class budget priorities with the House Republicans' Ryan budget that would end Medicare as we know it, gut investments in jobs and programs middle-class families depend on, and cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations," said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Senate Budget Committee chairwoman. "We know that when our priorities are laid out next to Republicans', the public stands with us."

House Republicans appeared eager for that fight. For two years, the House has passed detailed but nonbinding budget plans that would cut domestic programs to levels not seen since World War II, enact changes to Medicare that would partly privatize the program by offering older people fixed subsidies to buy private health insurance, and mandate a much-simplified tax code. Democrats have opposed those budgets while demanding a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction.

"We have a budget that's described as draconian, that decimates this program or that. They have a phrase, 'balanced approach,'" said Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina. "I'm tried of debating against a phrase."

House Republicans say punting the debt ceiling to May 18 is not so much a retreat as a "reordering" of the coming budget showdowns. House Republicans now take for granted that the first deadline, March 1, will come and go, and $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts to defense and domestic programs will go into force.

The next real showdown will come by March 27, when the stopgap measure financing the government expires. Republicans have made clear that they are willing to let the government shut down at that time to force deep spending cuts or changes to Medicare and Social Security that would bring down deficits in the long run.

"We know with certainty that a debt crisis is coming to America. It's not a question of if. It's a question of when," Mr. Ryan said. "And if there is a debt crisis, those who get hurt the worst are the ones who need government the most, our seniors, the poor."

Such continuing brinkmanship brought a rebuke from Ms. Murray, who said Republicans were trying to have it both ways, forcing Senate Democrats to move forward in an orderly way with a budget plan by mid-April, but threatening the next budget crisis weeks before that.

The pay provision brought its own protests. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, called it "institutionalized bribery," since it effectively says, do what Republicans want or do not get paid. That was why the nation passed the 27th Amendment, which says Congressional pay cannot be varied within a single Congress.

But the "no budget, no pay" mantra had bipartisan appeal. Senators, including Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, introduced their own version on Wednesday.

The orchestra is calling it the NY Phil Biennial.

Disclosed on Wednesday as part of the orchestra's announcement of 2013-14 programing, the biennial will be a 10-day festival that Philharmonic officials describe as a "veritable playground of new and recent music from around the world."

The project extends the orchestra's efforts to program more contemporary music and seize some sort of initiative in the search for more relevance and newer audiences. Under its music director, Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic has already established a modest new-music series in smaller concert halls and has installed composers and artists in residence.

The 2014 festival will run from May 29 to June 7 and include two programs by the orchestra, several programs of chamber music by Philharmonic musicians and performances by the Orchestra of St. Luke's and Juilliard School musicians. The organizers hope to add symposiums and other public events.

The Philharmonic said it had reached agreements with several New York institutions to collaborate on paying for, planning or serving as host for the concerts, including the 92nd Street Y, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Juilliard and the Special Music School at the Kaufman Center. While plans remain vague, as many as three events a day could be on the agenda, Mr. Gilbert said in an interview.

Orchestra officials acknowledged that the NY Phil Biennial may not attract the tens of thousands of visitors who pour into the art fairs in both Basel and Miami Beach or produce the vast display of culture in the pavilions of Venice.

"It's obviously not going to be exhaustive," Mr. Gilbert said. "It's obviously not going to go over every point of view." But for a "contained period of time," he added, audience members can "get a glimpse of what we feel has been exciting in the recent past."

The goal is to present works that have never been performed, or at least never in New York (which for some people amounts to the same thing).

"We want it to be a reaction to, and a reflection of, exciting composition that is happening around the world," Mr. Gilbert said. The orchestra chose the word "biennial," he said, to imply that the festival was permanent and to convey the feel of a broad international survey. "We want to provide for music a nexus and rallying point that the great biennials in the art world have become," Mr. Gilbert said.

Details are scarce because programmers want to have the flexibility of making last-minute decisions, Mr. Gilbert added, although they may have been too busy planning the orchestra's season, which opens on Sept. 25 with a gala concert featuring Osvaldo Golijov's "Azul" for cello and orchestra and an arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's "Serie del Ángel," with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist.

Other highlights of the season include performances of all five Beethoven piano concertos, with Yefim Bronfman as soloist; a number of works by Christopher Rouse, the Philharmonic's composer in residence; performances featuring Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster, who will be in his last season; an Asian tour; a program of music and clips from Pixar movies; and a showing of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the orchestra playing the film score live.

The "2001" performance will be a rare case in which the Philharmonic's lack of playing is being cast as a virtue. Silence is a key part of the movie, so the orchestra will stay onstage the whole time, the Philharmonic said, "highlighting Kubrick's strategic and eloquent use of both music and silence in storytelling."

The orchestra will dedicate two of its subscription concerts to the biennial, said Ed Yim, the vice president for artistic planning. The first will be a collaboration with the Juilliard Orchestra, works to be determined. The second will be the first performances of Mr. Rouse's Symphony No. 4, a Philharmonic commission.

The orchestra is expanding its new-music series, Contact!, to include three concerts at the 92nd Street Y's TriBeCa performance space, Mr. Yim said. One of those TriBeCa concerts will be included under the biennial umbrella.

The man, Carlton Berry, 22, was charged with aggravated assault but remained hospitalized for injuries sustained in the shooting.

A dispute between Mr. Berry and another man on Tuesday led to the shooting at Lone Star College's North Harris campus, the authorities said. At least one of the men may have been a student or a former student at the college. Both were detained by the authorities.

Three people were wounded by gunfire, including the two men in the altercation and a maintenance worker who was shot in the leg. A fourth person, who was not shot, was taken to a hospital with medical problems.

School officials said the campus would reopen on Wednesday morning on a normal schedule.

On Tuesday, Joshua Flores, a senior, was standing outside the cafeteria with friends when they heard gunshots. "We thought it was fireworks, so we didn't go anywhere," said Mr. Flores, 21. "And then a bunch of people came running our way, yelling: 'The guy has a gun! Run! Run!' "

The college, which has 19,000 students, was evacuated, and Houston police officers and Harris County sheriff's deputies spent hours clearing the buildings and deeming them safe.

Officials with the Sheriff's Office said they received the first call at 12:19 p.m. They said they did not know what the dispute was about. One of the men in the altercation had student identification, but officials had not confirmed that he was enrolled at the college.

An official with the Sheriff's Office, Maj. Armando Tello, said there appeared to be only one gun involved. Major Tello was the acting sheriff because Sheriff Adrian Garcia was out of town.

The shooting shocked students, faculty members and administrators at the 200-acre campus. The school is in northern Harris County and about 30 minutes from downtown. It is so close to George Bush Intercontinental Airport that college officials said one can often look up and wave at the passengers.

Students said they did not realize that the shots were actually gunfire. Because the shooting occurred outdoors — in a center courtyard near the library and academic buildings, officials said — many heard the sounds. One student sitting at a table on the third floor of the library thought it was a book cart toppling.

"Later we heard people screaming, and we knew it was gunshots," said the student, Jonathan Moreno, 19, a freshman.

Mr. Moreno hid with other students in a back room on the third floor of the library in the moments after the shooting. "It was a scary thing," he said. "Some people were panicking. Some lady was about to have like an asthma attack. There were some people crying."

Other students sat or crouched in classrooms in buildings with the lights turned off. Some fled classrooms and buildings so quickly that they left their belongings behind and planned on returning late Tuesday night to retrieve them.

Richard Carpenter, the chancellor for the Lone Star College System, said the North Harris campus, the system's first, was celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. "In 40 years, this is the first kind of incident like this we've ever had," Mr. Carpenter said. "The campus will be reopening tomorrow. It has been safe for 40 years. We think it's still safe."

One freshman, Whikeitha Thomas, 21, had been in math class for about 15 minutes when he heard loud bangs. "A teacher came in," Mr. Thomas said. "She said: 'There's been a shooting on campus. Lock the doors. Turn off the lights.' "

Mr. Thomas and his classmates hid in the classroom. In those tense moments, one of the students, a 23-year-old woman, collapsed. Mr. Thomas and another student gave the woman CPR inside the classroom and called 911. "The lights were off at first until she passed out," Mr. Thomas said. "When she passed out, they turned the lights back on so I could perform CPR."

As Mr. Thomas was trying to revive the woman, she told him that she was more frightened than the others. She said she had survived the Virginia Tech shooting. "She said, 'I went through this already at Virginia Tech, and I just don't like this feeling.' "