WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives adjourned on Tuesday night without acting on a $60 billion superstorm Sandy disaster aid bill, prompting angry denunciations from members from the states hardest hit by the storm.

The GOP leadership was criticized for what one Republican called a "personal betrayal" after it was decided that the bill would not be considered until the 113th Congress, which convenes at noon on Thursday.

The current session of the House comes to an end officially on Wednesday after the new Congress elected in November gets sworn in. Legislation does not carry over from session to session, so consideration of an aid bill would have to start all over if, as expected, nothing is scheduled before then.

"I have just been informed that we will be having perhaps no further votes in this Congress," said Democratic Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland. "I am deeply disappointed at that information. We have millions of our fellow citizens who have been badly damaged by a storm called Sandy."

"We help each other," Representative Rush Holt, a Democrat of New Jersey, said on the House floor. "We always have ... There are thousands of people who are not going back to their homes. They deserve our help."

Slideshow: Recovering after Sandy

Mario Tama / Getty Images

Residents of the Northeast are still picking up the pieces after Superstorm Sandy.

Launch slideshow

They and others pleaded with the Republican leaders of the House to rethink the decision, but few were in the chamber to listen. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia are in charge of scheduling the House.

"For the Speaker to just walk out is inexcusable," Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, told reporters. "It's wrong and I'm saying that as a member of the Republican Party."

'Unforgivable'
In a statement, a spokesman for Boehner said: "The Speaker is committed to getting this bill passed this month." That assurance was not enough for the members who have districts that were affected by Sandy.

"I feel it is a personal betrayal," said Representative Michael Grimm, a New York Republican. "But I think more importantly, when you parse out all the politics, the people of this country that have been devastated are looking at this as a betrayal by the Congress and by the nation, and that is just untenable and unforgivable."

A bipartisan group of eight lawmakers gathered after protesting the move on the House floor after the House voted late Tuesday night to pass a bill to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff." That bill passed 257-167.

The October 29 storm devastated New York and New Jersey coastlines with lesser damage felt along coastal areas of Delaware and Maryland.

The Senate passed a bill on December 28 by a vote of 61-33 that would provide $60.2 billion in additional aid to victims of superstorm Sandy.

During that vote, 12 Republicans supported the measure, but only after a replacement amendment that would have stripped $35 billion from the bill failed to pass.

Full Sandy coverage from NBC News

"It passed the Senate in a bipartisan way," said Representative Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat. "And again, to me this is a real betrayal, a betrayal of the leadership of the Republican Party."

The House had originally planned to consider a two-step bill that would start with $27 billion in supplemental aid, but also include an amendment worth an additional $33 billion.  The bill had been split to allow conservative Republicans to vote for a base level of additional aid, but not the entire package, which many Republicans said did not entirely go to those affected by Sandy.

"If we get into the next Congress, you have to hit the reset button," said Representative Jon Runyan, a New Jersey Republican who added that the Sandy aid package has been largely drowned out in recent days by negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" tax hikes and spending cuts that were set to kick in starting on Tuesday.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., left, joined by other New York area-lawmakers affected by superstorm Sandy, express their anger and disappointment after learning the House Republican leadership decided to allow the current term of Congress to end without holding a vote on aid for the storm's victims, at the Capitol in Washington, early Wednesday.

Many Republicans in Congress say that the Sandy aid bill contains billions of dollars in spending on projects unrelated to damage caused by the storm or for long-term infrastructure improvements that should compete with other discretionary spending.

Among expenditures criticized was $150 million to rebuild fisheries, including those in the Gulf Coast and Alaska, thousands of miles from Sandy's devastation, and $2 million to repair roof damage that pre-dates the storm on Smithsonian Institution buildings in Washington.

Democrats, including New York and New Jersey senators, have argued that long-term rebuilding projects such as tunnel repairs would be delayed if the full funding was not approved. They say that businesses would not start to rebuild if they were not confident of reimbursement.

An aide for Cantor said that the House Majority Leader "is committed to ensuring the urgent needs of New York and New Jersey residents are met, and he has been working tirelessly toward that goal."

NBC News' Frank Thorp and Reuters contributed to this report.

The last-minute deal-making on Capitol Hill may have helped avert the fiscal cliff for now, but many commentators expressed pessimism over the agreement and the distressing sight of lawmakers allowing the world’s largest economy to teeter near economic disaster.

“This is a bad bill that made a bad situation worse,” Richard Haas, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Wednesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“The only thing it did was avoiding sending the signal (to the rest of the world) that we’re reckless and out of control,” he added.

Consumers, businesses and financial markets have been rattled by the months of budget brinkmanship. The crisis ended when dozens of Republicans in the House of Representatives buckled and backed tax hikes approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

But even with the agreement, more budget drama is expected on the way. In February, Congress will have to decide what to do about a slew of other spending cuts. Then, in March, lawmakers will decide on whether to increase the federal borrowing limit.

“We could see an early lift in the markets because of relief the deal went through,” Gary Thayer, the chief macro strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors, told The New York Times. “The response may be muted because the deal left out many long-term issues.”

'A missed opportunity'
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who headed a deficit commission for Obama, said lawmakers missed a "magic moment to do something big" for the American economy.

“The deal approved today is truly a missed opportunity to do something big to reduce our long term fiscal problems, but it is a small step forward in our efforts to reduce the federal deficit,” they said in a joint statement released Tuesday.

PhotoBlog: Deal done, Obama heads back to Hawaii with a weary wink

In a scathing editorial, the Wall Street Journal called for the parties to go their own ways in Congress and tried to rally Republicans against Obama.

“Having been cornered into letting Democrats carry this special-interest slag heap through the House, Speaker John Boehner should from now on cease all backdoor negotiations and pursue regular legislative order. House Republicans should pursue their own agenda and let Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats pursue theirs. Mr. Obama has his tax triumph. Let it be his last,” it wrote on the editorial page.

Economists had been warning that the tax increases and spending cuts could take a chunk out of the U.S. economy.

PhotoBlog: Behind the scenes as Congress works overtime

But early Wednesday, world markets registered relief over the deal.

Benchmarks in Australia and Hong Kong boomeranged on the first trading day of the year. Asian markets had slipped on Monday, fearing that negotiations over the measure might collapse.

Many analysts were gloomy about long-term prospects.

“The process was so chaotic and the outcome so unsatisfactory that we are likely to see a further U.S. downgrade at some point,” Steven Englander, fixed-income strategist at Citi, wrote in a research note.

But China's state news agency Xinhua took a more severe view, warning the United States must get to grips with a budget deficit that threatened not a "fiscal cliff" but a "fiscal abyss." Most of China's $3.3 trillion foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars.

Bipartisan outrage after House skips vote on $60 billion Sandy aid bill

For the Washington Post, the entire episode was depressing.

The newspaper expressed discouragement for what the episode suggests for political compromise going forward.

“The United States will have to wait longer yet for its inevitable budget reckoning,” it wrote in an editorial.

“We hope the nation’s leaders will be able to accomplish in stages what they have been unable to do in a series of self-imposed crises: raise more revenue and significantly reduce future entitlement spending. But the fiscal cliff episode offers little encouragement,” the newspaper concluded.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Updated at 12:32 a.m. ET: An agreement to stave off the harshest and most immediate consequences of the fiscal cliff won approval in the House late Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the law on Wednesday night, the battle over which foreshadowed more fights with Congress over spending.

Following a day of hectic wrangling on Capitol Hill — where the prospects for passing the bipartisan, Senate legislation regarding the fiscal cliff hung in the balance for much of New Year's Day — the House voted 257 to 167 to pass the belated compromise measure over the objections of many conservative Republicans.

The legislation takes steps toward resolving the combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that took effect at midnight on Jan. 1. It preserves tax rates as they were at the end of 2012, except for those individuals earning more than $400,000 and households earning over $450,000. It also allows taxes on capital gains and dividends to go up, and extends benefits of the unemployed. Additionally, the Senate bill delays the onset of the "sequester" — the swift, automatic spending cuts — for two months. 

Fiscal cliff compromise leaves few satisfied

"Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress I will sign a law that raises the taxes on the wealthiest of Americans," Obama said in remarks at the White House Tuesday, "while preventing a middle-class tax hike."

The House vote laid bare some of the internal ideological divisions to plague the GOP over the past two years. More Republican congressmen (151) voted against the Senate bill than for it (85), meaning that Democrats' support was needed to advance the final deal. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, took the rare step of casting a vote, and did so in favor of the legislation. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the former Republican vice presidential nominee, also supported the package. But Boehner's top two lieutenants, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., each opposed the deal.

"Now the focus turns to spending," Boehner said in a statement following the House vote. "The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the ‘balanced’ approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt."

While the last-minute action on Capitol Hill essentially mitigates much of the risk posed to the U.S. economic recovery by the fiscal cliff, it hardly brings resolution to the bitter and often intractable fight in Washington over taxes and spending. The first half of 2013 will feature battles in Congress over raising the debt limit, continuing basic government funding and the expiration of this two-month delay in the sequester. 

Bipartisan outrage after House skips vote on $60 billion Sandy aid bill

Obama nodded to those looming fights in his remarks Tuesday evening, renewing his call for "balance" in any solution in the coming year to address deficits and debts. But the president also sternly warned Congress against using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, as Republicans had in summer of 2011.

"While I'll negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether to pay the bills they have racked up," Obama said.

PhotoBlog: Deal done, Obama heads back to Hawaii with a weary wink

The fiscal cliff itself was the product of discord in Congress resolving those very issues. And the difficulty in attaining even this less ambitious piece of legislation — versus the kind of "grand bargain" Obama had first sought in talks with Republicans — offered a cautionary tale for the 113th Congress, in which the House and the Senate remain controlled by the same parties as during the past two years. 

Squabbling
And even for much of Tuesday, House approval of the fiscal legislation — which was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Vice President Joe Biden — was far from certain. GOP leaders were forced to cajole conservatives who complained the fallback deal contained insufficient spending cuts. Only after it became clear that Republicans wouldn't have the votes to amend the Senate proposal — which the upper chamber said it wouldn't even consider — did House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, bring the bill to the floor. 

The squabbling was familiar to any observers of Congress during the past two years. This divide almost resulted in a government shutdown and a default on the national debt in 2011. It again threatened Tuesday to allow the painful, across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts to play out just as the U.S. economic recovery showed signs of accelerating.

PhotoBlog: See images of Congress working overtime to avoid fiscal cliff

And this deal just approved by Congress in the waning hours of 2013's first day all but ensures that much of the coming year will be dominated by similar battles in Washington. Republicans are hopeful they might be able to extract more spending cuts and entitlement reforms with the government up against other deadlines, like the one needed this spring to authorize more government borrowing. 

That could complicate Obama's already-ambitious second term agenda. The president said just this past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will seek comprehensive immigration reform legislation and new laws to address gun violence.