WASHINGTON — After years of partisan impasses and legislative failures, Congress in a matter of hours yesterday passed or advanced three far-reaching bills that will allocate billions of dollars and set new policies for guns, roads and energy.

The measures sent to President Bush for his signature will grant $14.5 billion in tax breaks for energy-related matters and devote $286 billion to transportation programs, including 6,000 local projects. The Senate also passed a bill to protect firearms manufacturers and dealers from various lawsuits. The House is poised to pass it this fall.

Combined with the Central American Free Trade Agreement that Congress approved Thursday, the measures constitute significant victories for Bush and GOP congressional leaders, who have been frustrated by Democrats in some areas such as Social Security. Senators cast vote after vote in order to start their August recess today.

Capping a long day of debates and roll calls, the Senate scheduled hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr. to begin Sept. 6, and voted to reauthorize portions of the Patriot Act, granting sweeping new powers to authorities to combat terrorism, although the chamber remains at odds with the House.

The bills approved this week won varying degrees of support from Democrats, with most of them opposing the trade pact and gun bill. The energy bill passed the Senate 74-26.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., voted in favor of the bill, emphasizing a provision that would prevent a federal bankruptcy court from forcing the Snohomish County Public Utility District to pay $122 million to the bankrupt Enron Corp.

"The public interest prevailed over the special interests that want to pick the pockets of Washington state consumers yet again," said Cantwell, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Even some senior Republicans said the transportation and energy bills passed largely because House and Senate leaders loaded them with pork-barrel projects and jettisoned contentious measures coveted by conservatives, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Congress will consider the drilling proposal separately later this year.

"Finally, by pure exhaustion, we're going to stagger across the finish line, emaciated and without much to brag about," Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said. "The only way we got the energy bill was to pick a lot of the meat out of it. This is not a particularly impressive bill."

The House and Senate have engaged in pre-vacation voting marathons before, but few have involved so much major legislation that was bottled up for so long. Lawmakers have wrangled over the energy bill for more than four years. Gun advocacy groups have pushed for the liability-protection bill for four years.

Even the massive transportation bill — usually a bipartisan favorite because it delivers jobs, bridges and mass-transit aid to so many districts — failed to jell for two years, mainly because of quarrels over state funding distributions. The House and Senate passed it yesterday by overwhelming margins.

Lawmakers cited several factors for the breakthrough in the long-awaited bills, including high gasoline prices and a greater GOP willingness to include Democrats in the early drafting stages, especially for the energy bill. But some attributed it mainly to President Bush's re-election and the Republicans' continued control of both legislative chambers, giving Democrats little choice but to join GOP efforts or have no say in how bills are shaped.

Yesterday's action included Senate approval, 99-1, of $1.5 billion in additional spending for veterans' health-care programs. The House approved the spending Thursday.

The money represents a victory for Sen. Patty Murray, who had proposed the Senate add $1.5 billion, while the House had proposed just under $1 billion to add to the 2005 fiscal year budget that ends Sept. 30.

"I'm gratified — and relieved — that we have been able to get the VA the funding," the Washington Democrat said. "I've been saying for months that taking care of our current and future veterans is a cost of war. It's a promise that must be kept."

Many lawmakers viewed the energy bill — approved by the House Thursday and by the Senate yesterday — as the week's crowning achievement. It provides tax breaks and other incentives to encourage new nuclear plants, cleaner-burning coal facilities, and production of more oil and natural gas. It also offers incentives to produce energy from wind and other renewable sources, and to make homes and office buildings more efficient. The bill allows for enforceable rules governing the electrical grid's operation and provides tax benefits for investment in transmission lines — efforts to improve the grid's reliability.

Analysts from across the political spectrum said the bill does little to reduce U.S. oil imports, lower prices or deal with other energy issues.

They said the $14.5 billion in tax breaks and other incentives will do little more than send money to energy companies, some of which already are reaping huge profits.

The Associated Press and Seattle Times staff contributed to this report.