WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a funding bill and a memorandum to Congress that keep the government open for nine more days after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Biden, who has held congressional office since 1972, also addressed many of the issues that have strained relations between Washington and the nation’s capital and vowed to bring leaders of both political parties together on solutions, despite Washington’s long history of gridlock.

“We need to work together, and we’ll do that and we’ll take each other’s sides,” Biden said at the White House. “That’s how we get things done.”

“I’m a guy who likes to build stuff,” he said. “That means if somebody doesn’t want it, I don’t want it. You know, in fact, some people just want it and I don’t want it because, you know, I’ve got a project I’m working on.”

Biden was in Washington to sign a memorandum outlining a framework for a 10-week spending bill for the agencies that he described as “hard work.”

Biden signed the legislation and the memorandum together, flanked by a bevy of Democratic and Republican lawmakers who were gathered outside the White House.