Washington  - The United States' economic recovery package overcame a decisive hurdle Monday in the Senate, which voted to close debate on an 827-billion-dollar compromise bill that would be the largest stimulus in US history.

The Senate voted 61-36 to invoke cloture on the legislation, setting the stage for a final vote in the chamber on Tuesday. Only three Republican members supported the compromise bill.

The procedural vote, which is necessary to prevent opponents from effectively blocking legislation with endless debate in the 100-seat Senate, requires the support of at least 60 members.

Democrats hold a 58-41 seat majority in the chamber, with one seat unfilled. The three Republican supporters had been part of a small band of centrist senators who hammered out the compromise bill over the weekend.

The Senate will move to a final vote - which requires a simple majority - on Tuesday, after which the bill will have to go through yet another tense round of negotiations with members of the House of Representatives.

"Our job does not end here, it begins," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the chamber, said ahead of the vote. He warned that the economic crisis was "far too severe" to be solved by one piece of legislation.

The House passed its own 819-billion-dollar version of the stimulus last month. Though the size of the packages are roughly the same, the Senate added tax cuts and removed some spending programmes that could make for contentious negotiations between the two houses of Congress.

Congressional leaders have promised to get a final bill to US President Barack Obama's desk to sign by the end of the week.

Obama travelled to a small manufacturing city in Indiana to build support for the record package earlier Monday. He held a townhall meeting with about 1,700 residents of Elkhart, Indiana, where unemployment has tripled to more than 15 per cent in the last year as the wider economy suffers a serious recession.

The jobless rate across the United States currently stands at 7.6 per cent, the highest level since 1992. The economy shrank 3.8 per cent in the final quarter of 2008.

Later Monday, Obama was to hold his first press conference since being inaugurated January 20, to further drive home the message that a massive stimulus package was the only means of stabilizing the world's largest economy.

"The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression," Obama said in Elkhart, warning of double-digit unemployment if Congress fails to approve government aid.

"More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse. So we can't afford to wait," Obama said.

On Tuesday, Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is also set to unveil an overhaul of the country's financial rescue plan - a separate initiative to tackle the banking and housing crisis at the heart of the economic downturn. (dpa)