Republicans voted en masse against the president's economic package, dimming its prospects of eventual passage

President Obama's jobs bill was defeated in the Senate on Tuesday. While the vote remained open, it failed to attract enough support to stay alive in the chamber. The vote may end the bill's legislative life as a unified package while opening the door for efforts to pass pieces of it in coming months.

Republican opposition had assured defeat of the jobs bill for some time but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has worked for weeks to try to unify Democrats in support of cloture on the package. Democrats hoped their relative unity would highlight GOP opposition to a measure that polls well.

After inserting a provision to pay for the bill by raising income tax rates by 5.6 percent on people who earn more than a $1 million a year, Democrats accused the GOP of blocking the legislation both to deny Obama a victory and to protect millionaires at the expense of the rest of the country.

"Folks should ask their senators, why would you consider voting against putting teachers and police officers back to work?" President Obama said in a speech Tuesday in Pittsburgh. "Ask them what's wrong with having folks who have made millions or billions of dollars to pay a little more."