The US Senate has today passed a $838 billion stimulus plan that President Barack Obama said is needed to stave off an even deeper recession.
With scant Republican support, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted 61-37 to approve the package, which differs significantly from the $819 billion measure the House of Representatives passed almost two weeks ago.
Mr Obama wants the final bill on his desk this weekend, meaning negotiators from both sides must begin haggling over what the final package will look like.
The Senate and the House of Representatives will now negotiate the final shape of the legislation, with Mr Obama arbitrating disputes.
While Mr Obama has sought bipartisan support, he so far has only won the backing of three Senate Republicans who have made it clear that they will withdraw their support if a large amount of spending is added.
In the Senate, at least 60 votes are needed to clear potential procedural hurdles and Democrats only control 58 seats.
"If it's more expensive, if it has wasteful spending added back in, then it would be very difficult for us to support," Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who led the effort to forge a compromise with the Democrats, said yesterday.
To win the support from three Republicans, the Senate sliced tens of billions of dollars out of its version, including $16 billion for school construction and $40 billion in direct aid to states that are facing growing budget gaps.
However, Obama has already said he wants some of the education money restored. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, warned that negotiations could stretch beyond Mr Obama's deadline and into the middle of next week.
The package is an important milestone for the new president, a Democrat, who wants a finished product on his desk by February 16th. His roadshow this week aims to illustrate the importance of its job creation measures for average Americans.
Mr Obama today travelled to a Florida city hard hit by mortgage foreclosures to rally Americans around the plan. The president went to Fort Myers today partly because it had the country's highest foreclosure rate last year, with 12 per cent of housing units receiving a foreclosure-related notice.
Yesterday, he held a similar event in Elkhart, Indiana, where unemployment has rocketed as the economy has fallen into the deepest recession in decades.
Republicans complain the economic plan has too many spending projects and not enough tax cuts. The House version passed with no Republican support, while the Senate version drew just the three Republican votes.
But Mr Obama showed little patience for mainstream Republican arguments, emphasising in a news conference last night that Republicans who controlled the White House and Congress oversaw rocketing US debt and the onset of recession.
"It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they've presided over a doubling of the national debt," Mr Obama said. "I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility."
Mr Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, today unveiled a revamped financial rescue plan to cleanse up to $500 billion in spoiled assets from banks' books and support $1 trillion in new lending through an expanded Federal Reserve programme.
The president has also today ordered an interagency review to examine US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan ahead of the Nato summit in April, the White House said.
Reuters