With a successful US Senate vote on his economic stimulus bill in sight, President Barack Obama yesterday warned that quick action was needed to avoid catastrophe and blamed Republican policies for pushing the country into crisis.

Senate Democrats agreed late last Friday to trim spending proposals and support tax cuts in a roughly $800 billion bill that was to go to a vote on Tuesday.

They rolled back an earlier $937 billion proposal by culling what critics, mostly Republicans, called billions of dollars in unwarranted spending.

Obama praised the group of moderate senators from both political parties for coming up with the deal.

Obama has continued a more aggressive posture in which he has sought to hit back at naysayers and wield the political capital that his robust victory gave him.

Obama poured scorn on Republican critics who said the stimulus bill lacked enough tax cutting measures and pointed his finger at the polices of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush for dragging the country into recession.

"We can't expect relief from the tired old theories that, in eight short years, doubled the national debt, threw our economy into a tailspin, and led us into this mess in the first place," Obama said. "We can't rely on a losing formula that offers only tax cuts as the answer to all our problems while ignoring our fundamental economic challenges," he added.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to unveil steps tomorrow that will include government insurance of bad assets, a plan to shift toxic securities off bank balance sheets and money to modify homeowner mortgages.

More evidence that the United States was in its worst economic crisis in more than 70 years came in Friday's report that nearly 600,000 jobs were lost in January.