President Barack Obama has shifted tactics, vowing to push a bit-by-bit implementation of his jobs plan, with the Senate likely to defeat his drive for the huge bill to be enacted in full.
Senior White House officials said they would sit down with Democratic Senate leaders to work out how to hold a sequence of high-stakes votes on parts of the $447 billion dollar plan, including tax cuts and infrastructure spending.
"Our expectation is, if they don't pass the whole package, we're going to break it up into constituent parts," Obama said at a meeting of his Jobs Council in Pittsburgh in the key 2012 electoral state of Pennsylvania.
News that makes sense
Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
GEITHNER ATTACKS REPUBLICANS
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned Republicans that they risk helping to tip the country into recession if they fail to back the bill.
Geithner launched an uncharacteristically partisan attack on Obama's political foes.
"If Congress does not act, it will be because Republicans decided they did not want to do anything to help the economy," he said.
"Growth will be weaker... people will be out of work.
If the bill is not passed, he added, "We will put off the important challenges."
"That is not something we should do."
DEMANDS TO PASS FULL BILL
Obama has spent weeks demanding that Congress pass a full version of a bill designed to boost growth, cut the unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent and shield the fragile US recovery from the threat of European debt contagion.
But given staunch Republican opposition, it was never likely the entire package would emerge in one piece from a congressional showdown.
Instead, the stage is set for a new round of grandstanding and political brinkmanship, unlikely to improve the disconsolate public's contempt for Washington, but which holds heavy implications for Obama's reelection bid.
The Senate was due to hold a procedural vote on an amended version of the bill Obama unveiled to a joint session of Congress last month.
60-VOTE BARRIER
The package had no chance of surmounting the 60-vote barrier needed to advance important legislation in the Democrat-led Senate due to opposition from Republicans who decry more stimulus spending.
But the number of Democrats who defect and oppose the bill will be closely watched, both for what it augurs for passing piecemeal legislation and for its impact on the Democratic president's diminished authority.
The measure up for a vote on Tuesday swaps Obama's plan to pay for the legislation by curbing tax deductions for households $250,000 a year with a 5.6 percent surcharge on those earning a million dollars and more.
DEMOCRAT JITTERS
Some Democrats, especially senators with tough 2012 races, had balked at Obama's approach as Republicans have charged them with waging class warfare and of backing a move that could hurt job-creating small business owners.
The Republican-led House of Representatives is yet to move on the Obama bill, and its leaders had previously told the president he could only expect portions of the bill to be sent to his desk.
The Republican majority leader in the House, Eric Cantor, said Tuesday the Senate would prove "there isn't support for the president's plan" and hoped Obama would drop his "all or nothing" approach and negotiate.
SMALL BUSINESS
The Republican agenda includes calls for cuts in regulations on small businesses, unemployment insurance reform, and tax relief Democrats says would not spark jobs growth and would reward the most wealthy Americans.
Despite the failure to force a full vote on the bill, senior White House and Obama's 2012 campaign aides believe that they have won the argument over the measure and moved public opinion in their direction.
Pointing to a Republican nominating debate Tuesday in New Hampshire, and Obama's foes in Washington, a top White House aide slammed obstruction tactics of a party determined to oust the president from office in the 2012 election.
"They have nothing that will help the economy in the short term," the official said, warning that a deepening economic emergency would not wait 13 months until the next election for action.
BILL DIVIDED INTO PARTS
The White House now plans to market individual parts of his bill, including a payroll tax cut, financing to keep teachers on the job, infrastructure spending and help for war veterans to find work.
They will seek to build pressure on each individual vote, in the hope of cracking Republican resistance and forging coalitions for measures they argue will have a tangible economic impact.
"That is going to dominate the agenda here in Washington for the better part of the year. The president is going to keep making the case that we need to take action," the official said.
Obama's campaign guru David Axelrod released a memo, meanwhile, arguing that since the president had started selling the jobs bill, the public had come around to his way of thinking.
"The more people know about the American Jobs Act; the more they hear the president talking about it; the more they want Congress to pass the plan," Axelrod said.
Axelrod cited polling data which he said showed that 43 percent of Americans backed the American Jobs Act in early September, compared to 52 percent who back it now.
