The US Senate spent much of Saturday debating the economic stimulus package on which lawmakers had reached a compromise a day earlier in a bid to pull the United States out of recession, dpa reported.
A bipartisan group of senators put forward a tentative deal late Friday on a 780-billion-dollar recovery plan. The compromise would strip some 150 billion dollars out of an earlier version of the legislation before the Senate.
The upper chamber of the US Congress appeared set for a vote on the measure on Tuesday and would then still have to reconcile the bill with the lower House of Representatives, which last week passed an 819-billion-dollar version of the legislation.
President Barack Obama again urged lawmakers to act quickly on the measure. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he attacked Republicans for focussing on tax cuts and resisting additional government spending, but he praised Friday's deal, saying the Senate had "responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands."
"Legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it's received over the last month, and it will receive more in the days to come. But we can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right. And the time for action is now," he said.