President Barack Obama said Republicans and Democrats in Congress shouldn’t let “very modest differences” over tax cuts and spending stand in the way of enacting an economic stimulus plan.

The legislation needs “swift action,” Obama said today at the White House before the Senate began debate on a stimulus plan that would cost almost $900 billion. “That’s what we’ve been trying to do in trying to move this package forward.”

In contrast, the Senate’s top Republican said most of his party supports a “dramatically different” stimulus plan and accused Democrats of being unwilling to negotiate even as Obama said he welcomes Republican ideas.

Senator Mitch McConnell, pointing to an NBC interview yesterday in which Obama said he wanted to include Republican ideas, said Democratic lawmakers haven’t “gotten the memo.”

“I hope he can get through to them that the way to build this package is, indeed, to do it on a bipartisan basis, which doesn’t mean just talking to us, but including ideas that we think would work,” McConnell, of Kentucky, said today.

Leaders of both houses of Congress say they want to get a bill to Obama’s desk by mid-February. The president met with top congressional Democrats this evening at the White House.

Obama has repeatedly stressed the urgency of passing the legislation. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index showed today that manufacturing in the U.S. shrank again last month and the Commerce Department reported consumer spending recorded an unprecedented sixth monthly decline in December. The U.S. lost 2.6 million jobs last year, and economists forecast continued job losses as the recession heads into a second year.

House Plan

The House last week passed an $819 billion package of tax cuts and spending. Although Obama appealed for bipartisan support, the legislation failed to get a single Republican vote.

Obama said the next few days will be “critical.”

“We hope to be able to get the bill through in the next couple of weeks and put America back to work and start digging ourselves out of this deep hole that we’re in,” he said.

Republicans are urging that more tax cuts be included in the legislation.

Senator Charles Schumer, the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat, said lawmakers hope to attract Republican support in part by adding as much as $35 billion in politically popular infrastructure spending. read more