Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stressed Sunday that Republicans are "all for extending unemployment insurance" but not in favor of deficit spending.
"They've taken the deficit as a percentage of GDP from 3.2 percent to almost 10 percent in a year and a half," McConnell said on cnn's "State of the Union." "Somewhere in the course of spending a trillion dollars, we ought to be able to find enough to pay for a program for the unemployed."
Obama also urged the Senate to act this week on a package of tax cuts and expanded lending for small businesses, the two other legislative priorities Obama and Democrats agreed to last week following the passage of the financial regulation bill.