The bill passed Congress on Friday on party-line votes, allowing Democratic leaders to deliver on their promise of clearing the legislation by mid-February. Obama will sign the measure Tuesday in Denver.
"It will take time, and it will take effort, but working together, we will turn this crisis into opportunity and emerge from our painful present into a brighter future," the president said.
Obama "now has a bill to sign that will create millions of good-paying jobs and help families and businesses stay afloat financially," said Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who was a leading architect of the measure.
"It will shore up our schools and roads and bridges, and infuse cash into new sectors like green energy and technology that will sustain our economy for the long term," he added in a statement.
Hours earlier, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell offered a different prediction for a bill he said was loaded with wasteful spending.
"A stimulus bill that was supposed to be timely, targeted, and temporary is none of the above," he said in remarks on the Senate floor.
"And this means Congress is about to approve a stimulus that's unlikely to have much stimulative effect."
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in the GOP radio address yesterday, contended Democrats settled "on a random dollar amount in the neighborhood of $1 trillion and then set out to fill the bucket."
In a struggle lasting several weeks, lawmakers in the two political parties both emphasized they wanted to pass legislation to revitalize the economy and ease frozen credit markets. But the plan that the administration and its allies eventually came up drew the support of only three Republicans in Congress - moderate Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Their support was critical, though, in helping the bill squeak through the Senate on a vote of 60 to 38, precisely the number needed for passage. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown cast the 60th vote in favor in a nearly deserted Senate, hours after the roll call began. The House vote was 246 to 183.
The legislation, among the costliest ever considered in Congress, provides billions of dollars to aid victims of the recession through unemployment benefits, food stamps, medical care, job retraining, and more. Tens of billions are ticketed for the states to offset cuts they might otherwise have to make in aid to schools and local governments, and there is more than $48 billion for transportation projects such as road and bridge construction, mass transit and high-speed rail.
Democrats said the bill's tax cuts would help 95 percent of all Americans, much of the relief in the form of a break of $400 for individuals and $800 for couples. At the insistence of the White House, people who do not earn enough money to owe income taxes are eligible, an attempt to offset the payroll taxes they pay.
