By Jeremy Pelofsky and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Friday was expected to pass a $787 billion (547.5 billion pound) economic stimulus package aimed at unleashing large spending and tax cuts to help pull the economy out of a 14-month recession.
Quick approval of the emergency package would give President Barack Obama a political victory but fall short of his goal of broad Republican backing.
Not a single Republican voted to support the bill in the early test votes and they highlighted what they called wasteful spending in the gigantic bill that is more than 1,000 pages long.
The president has urged the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass the stimulus bill before the end of the coming holiday weekend so he can sign it into law. His goal is to create or save 3.5 million jobs in an economy that has seen massive job losses since the recession began in December 2007.
The House of Representatives was preparing to vote by about 2 p.m. (7 p.m. British time) and the Senate was expected to follow in the evening, but there was still no final agreement between Senate Democratic and Republican leaders to do so.
Obama again made his case for the package as he met corporate chief executives at the White House.
"It's a plan that will ignite spending by businesses and consumers, make the investments necessary for lasting economic growth and prosperity," Obama said, adding that 90 percent of jobs saved and created would be in the private sector.
Obama's top economic adviser acknowledged that the recovery would be slow.
"It is going to take time to work this through," Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said on NBC's "Today Show." "We're not promising that you're going to see some miracle cure, some silver bullet for the economy."
The price tag of the stimulus package dropped slightly. The Congressional Budget Office revised its cost estimate to $787 billion, down from the $789 billion leaders in the House and Senate had earlier forecast.
STIFF REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION
Most Republicans opposed the stimulus plans Democrats put forward, saying they expanded government spending too much and did not include enough tax cuts that they argued would better boost the ailing economy.
The final package includes about $500 billion in spending and money for social programs like the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor. It has approximately $287 billion in tax cuts that include small tax incentives to spur home and automobile sales as well as business tax deductions.
"The only thing the Democrats' stimulus bill will do is stimulate more government and more debt," said Representative Mike Pence, a member of the Republican leadership.
"The American people are asking, 'What's 13 bucks a week going to do to get this economy moving again for the average American?'" he said, referring to extra money that will come in paychecks because of reduced taxes withheld by employers.
The White House has said that it would take about a month for the money to begin flowing.
Democrats trimmed down the package from as much as $937 billion to secure the votes of three Republicans that were needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate.
Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter agreed to back the legislation if it was pared down to below $800 billion. To achieve that, one major cut was tens of billions of dollars from grants to help states plug growing budget gaps.
Money for building new schools was also stripped out and congressional negotiators also severely scaled back tax incentives aimed at boosting flagging home and car sales that were deemed too expensive.
Still, the measure includes almost $54 billion to help states with their budget deficits and to modernize schools, $27.5 billion for highway projects, $8.4 billion for public transportation and $9.3 billion for Amtrak and high-speed rail service, among other projects.
The final agreement also included limits on compensation for senior executives of companies receiving government aid from the $700 billion financial bailout, including restrictions on bonuses.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, Donna Smith and Deborah Charles; Editing by David Storey)
