The House passed legislation Friday to overhaul the nation’s energy policy and curb global warming, handing President Obama a landmark legislative victory on one of his top priorities.

The bill (HR 2454) passed 219-212, with eight Republican “yes” votes tipping the balance. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill.

The vote capped a day of furious lobbying by Democratic leaders to win over wavering members and a last-ditch effort by Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, to stall action, with what amounted to a rare House equivalent of a filibuster. Using his unlimited leadership time to circumvent the time limit for debate, Boehner spent about an hour going almost line-by-line through a 300-page substitute amendment filed early Friday morning, questioning individual provisions.

“I hate to do this to you, I really do,” Boehner told colleagues, eager to leave town for the holiday recess. “But when you file a 300-page amendment at 3:09 a.m., the American people have the right to know what’s in this bill. They have the right to know what we are voting on.”

While Republicans and Democrats were sharply divided on the bill, they concurred on its significance. Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., referred to the bill as “historic” and Boehner called it, “the most profound piece of legislation to come to this floor in 100 years.” Officials said Capitol telephones were near capacity because of telephone calls on the bill.

Cap and Trade

The vote marks the first time either chamber has passed a bill to cap the emissions of greenhouse gases that trigger global warming. The bill would limit emissions at 17 percent below current levels in 2020, 42 percent in 2030 and 83 percent in 2050.

The bill also would allow companies such as electric utilities, refineries and factories to buy and sell pollution allowances and get credit for funding special projects to reduce emissions on farms and in forests. The legislation would require utililities to produce 15 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020, with another 5 percent energy savings from efficiency. States could petition to bring the renewable mandate down to 12 percent, with 8 percent from efficiency.

Democrats touted the legislation as a major step toward reducing global warming, spurring development of renewable energy and creating “green” jobs.

“This is a jobs bill,” said Edward J. Markey , D-Mass, one of the bill’s architects on the Energy and Commerce Committee. “It will create millions of new clean energy jobs in whole new industries with incentives to drive competition in the energy marketplace.”

Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher , told colleagues the bill would not hurt the domestic coal industry, a top source of greenhouse gases. “It enables coal usage to grow as the demand for electricity increases nationwide,” he said.

Boucher also warned opponents that failure to address global warming with legislation would leave the task to the EPA, which could be expected to take a tougher stance.

Republicans argued that the bill — which they described as a “national energy tax” — will drive up utility costs and cost the economy jobs. They said moving to a cap-and-trade system without agreements by developing economies such as China and India to do the same would put the U.S. at an economic disadvantage.

Waxman also assured Debbie Halvorson , D-Ill., that projects registered under the voluntary Chicago Climate Exchange would be eligible under the agriculture offsets market.

Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, who leads the Natural Resources Committee and hails from a coal-producing state, voted against the bill. He said the pollution cap in 2020 “is still too high and too soon to incentivize rapid development and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies, so as to ensure coal mining jobs for the future.”

But Lloyd Doggett , D-Texas, who earlier said he would oppose the bill, reversed course Friday and voted in favor. He said without House action, the Senate wouldn’t act either. And he described much of the opposition voiced during House debate as “some of the most inane arguments that I have heard against refusing to act on this vital national security challenge.”

North Dakota Democrat Earl Pomeroy , said he was pleased that the latest version of the bill contains provisions to protect rural districts such as his, but still did not go far enough to win his vote.

“We all have our different jobs today. They need to round up some votes, and I need to represent North Dakota,” Pomeroy said.

Pomeroy said he skipped the luau.

“I had this horrible image of being chased across the South Lawn by [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel and six cabinet secretaries,” he said.

Dispute Over Costs

Republicans hammered the idea that the bill would hurt consumers by raising electricity prices. Republican Whip Eric Cantor argued that the bill would raise household costs for middle-class families by $3,000, citing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study on costs of the bill. But the author of the study said his findings were misquoted by Republicans and that the true cost of a cap-and-trade bill would be far lower. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost households $175 a year, a price tag that Democrats like to describe as the price of buying a postage stamp daily.

“We also can’t forget that this national energy tax comes down hardest on the poor,” Cantor said.

That comment drew a derisive response from Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel , D-N.Y.

“When the Republican party becomes the protector of the poor it’s a day that I’ve been waiting for,” Rangel quipped.

The House rejected, 172-256, an amendment by J. Randy Forbes , R-Va., to replace the bill’s text with legislation (HR 513) that would establish grants and prizes for energy technologies on the model of the Manhattan Project.

Leah Nylen, Richard Rubin and Jonathan Allen contributed to this story.