WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate faced a critical "moment of truth," President Barack Obama declared Tuesday as lawmakers neared a vote on his $447 billion jobs bill. Despite his exhortations, defeat was likely at the hands of Republican senators opposed to stimulus spending and a tax surcharge on millionaires.

"This is gut check time," Obama told a union crowd in Pittsburgh not long before Congress' first vote on the plan. "Right now, our economy needs a jolt. Right now. And today, the Senate of the United States has a chance to do something, right now, by voting for the American Jobs Act."

At the same time, acknowledging reality, Obama said that if Congress didn't pass the entire package he was prepared to break it into pieces and try to pass job-creation legislation that way.

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