President Obama appeared close last night to a bruising and hard fought victory in his effort to get his massive economic stimulus package passed by the US Senate, but again with almost no Republican support.

Amid stunning new job losses and yet another bank failure yesterday, the Bill was stripped of roughly $120 billion in spending, down to about $780 billion.

The cuts appeared enough to persuade two or three moderate Republicans to support the package - giving Mr Obama just enough votes to force through the centrepiece of his domestic legislative agenda.

There was still debate last night and the deal was tentative, but Mr Obama’s unexpectedly difficult time in getting the package passed has been a sobering experience. The issue has not only gone some way to rallying and re-energising Republicans after their heavy election defeats in November, but has left the president’s hopes of bringing a new era of bipartisanship to Washington looking increasingly forlorn.

Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Leader, indicated last night that a vote could take place on Sunday. The delay would, among other things, give time for Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who has brain cancer and is in Florida after suffering a seizure on Inauguration Day, to travel back to the chamber.

Democrats hold a 58-41 majority in the Senate, but 60 votes are needed for passage of the bill because it would raise the federal deficit. That threshold would also allow Democrats to cut off any potential Republican efforts to block the measure by filibuster.

Earlier yesterday Mr Obama said further delay to pass the Bill would be "inexcusable and irresponsible" given the worst monthly employment report since 1974 - 598,000 jobs were lost in January and the national unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent. Late in the day federal regulators announced the closure of First Bank Financial Services in Georgia, the seventh failure this year of a federally insured bank.

On Monday, Mr Obama will take to the road for the first time since he entered the Oval office to sell the stimulus package to the US public.

He will first visit Elkhart in Indiana, a city with one of the worst unemployment rates in America, and then onto Fort Myers, Florida, on Tuesday, where at town-hall style meetings he will tell ordinary voters what the Bill means for them.

When the stimulus Bill was passed by the House of Representatives last week, not a single Republican voted for it. In the Senate last night, John McCain, Mr Obama’s election opponent, decried the Bill for what he called its wasteful spending and the fact that it will at a stroke almost double the country’s budget deficit, which is already near $1 trillion.

Mr Obama has received mounting criticism from within his own party in recent days for what some say has been his failure to effectively market the stimulus plan and for allowing Republicans to frequently hijack the debate and place him on the defensive.

In the past 48 hours he has sharpened his rhetoric against his Republican opponents, saying that America faces economic “catastrophe” without the Bill, which is aimed at creating or saving three million jobs. On Monday night he will hold a primetime press conference to again press his case.

Even with passage of the Bill, Mr Obama faces an even tougher task ahead. With the banking sector still in a perilous state, he is likely going to have to ask Congress soon for hundreds of billions of additional dollars to shore up the stricken financial sector - a task that could well prove even more difficult in the Senate.

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