国际英语新闻：Obama urges Senate to pass unemployment extension bill

Republicans have successfully blocked the bill from clearing the Senate for three times, quoting the additional budgetary burden as their main concern.

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.