WASHINGTON — With job losses soaring nationwide, Senate Democrats reached agreement with a small group of Republicans Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama’s plan for combatting the worst recession in decades.

“The American people want us to work together. They don’t want to see us dividing along partisan lines on the most serious crisis confronting our country,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of three Republican moderates who broke ranks and pledged their votes for the bill.

Democratic leaders expressed confidence that the concessions they had made to Republicans and moderate Democrats to trim the measure had cleared the way for its passage. No final vote was expected before Monday.

Officials put the cost of the bill at $827 billion, including Obama’s signature tax cut of up to $1,000 for working couples, even if they earn too little to pay income taxes. Also included are breaks for homebuyers and people buying new cars. Much of the new spending would be for victims of the recession, in the form of unemployment compensation, health care and food stamps.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., welcomed news of Friday evening’s compromise.

“Tonight we’ve shown the country that we can put partisanship aside to make the tough decisions needed to address this crisis and move forward,” she said.

“This is about offering security and confidence to the American people again, and I believe this bill will do that,” she said.

Washington, like every other state, is keenly interested in the outcome. It could bring $3.3 billion in funding for state-run programs and mean additional federal spending on national parks, cleaning up Hanford plant and even providing grants to build a passenger terminal at Paine Field.

But some of the details coming out Friday did not bode well for states.

It appeared Senators eliminated $16 billion for construction of elementary and secondary schools and another $3.5 billion in funding for higher education.

“I’m really surprised they eliminated school construction because it is where you would have a lot of jobs created,” said Dick Thompson, special advisor to Gov. Chris Gregoire on the federal legislation.

Even more grave could be a reported slashing of dollars from the “fiscal stabilization” account intended to give cash-strapped states a boost in their budgets.

The bill passed by the House contains $79 billion for states, which could translate into $1.3 billion for Washington. The Senate had the same amount in its original legislation but reports Friday were that the sum had been slashed to $31.5 billion.

Thompson said late Friday that what is in the compromise bill is not necessarily what will be in the version sent to President Barack Obama.

“Anybody who would try to make decisions based on the Senate budget would be ill-served because it will require some kind of conferencing with the House,” he said.

Republican critics complained that whatever the cost, billions were ticketed for programs that would not create jobs.

While $40 billion was cut from a “fiscal stabilization fund” for state governments’ education costs, $14 billion to boost the maximum for college Pell Grants by $400 to $5,250 would be preserved, as would aid to local school districts for the No Child Left Behind law and special education.

A plan to help the unemployed purchase health insurance would be reduced to a 50 percent subsidy instead of two-thirds.

The agreement capped a tense day of backroom negotiations in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, joined by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, sought to attract the support of enough Republicans to give the measure the needed 60-vote majority. Democrats hold a 58-41 majority in the Senate, including two independents.

Uncertain of the outcome of the talks, Democrats called Sen. Edward Kennedy back to Washington in case his vote was needed. The Massachusetts senator, battling brain cancer, has been in Florida in recent days and has not been in the Capitol since suffering a seizure on Inauguration Day more than two weeks ago.

In addition to Collins, Republican Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Olympia Snowe of Maine pledged to vote for the legislation.

Whatever the price tag, the compromise marked a victory for the new president, who has veered between calls for bipartisanship and increasingly strong criticism of Republicans in recent days. And it indicated that Democratic leaders remain on track to deliver a bill to the White House by the end of next week.

Late Friday night, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “On the day when we learned 3.6 million people have lost their jobs since this recession began, we are pleased the process is moving forward and we are closer to getting Americans a plan to create millions of jobs and get people back to work.”

Obama said earlier in the day that further delay would be “inexcusable and irresponsible” given Friday’s worst monthly unemployment report in a generation. And late Friday, federal regulators announced the closures of three banks, First Bank Financial Services in Georgia and Alliance Bank and County Bank in California, raising to nine the number of bank failures this year.

“The world is waiting to see what we’re going to do in the next 24 hours,” said Reid who has spent much of the week trying to balance demands among moderates in both parties against pressure for a larger bill from liberals in his own rank and file.

Reid met with Collins and Specter as well as Sen. Ben Nelson, a conservative Nebraska Democrat who had long advocated cuts in the House-passed bill.

Later, Nelson declared on the Senate floor, “We trimmed the fat, fried the bacon and milked the sacred cows.” He said the compromise included $350 billion in tax cuts that would reach 95 percent of all Americans.

One Republican-proposed document that circulated earlier called for cuts of $60 billion from money Democrats want to send to the states. That money is targeted to avoid budget cuts for schools as well as law enforcement and other programs.

Talk of cuts in proposed education funds triggered a counterattack from advocates of school spending as well as unhappiness among Democrats.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said he and others hoped that some of the funds on the chopping block would be restored next week when negotiations open on a House-Senate compromise.

At its core, the legislation is designed to ease the worst economic recession in generations, and combines hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending with tax cuts. Much of the money would go for victims of the recession in the form of food stamps, unemployment compensation and health care. There are funds, as well, for construction of highways and bridges.

Herald reporter Jerry Cornfield and the Associated Press contributed to this report.