WASHINGTON — Colorado Democrats heralded an agreement Wednesday that could advance a $789 billion economic stimulus package this week, but so far it's not appeasing Republican critics.

The deal reached between Senate and House of Representatives negotiators trimmed the overall spending, and will not give local school districts all the construction money they had hoped to get from an earlier, House-passed version.

"You don't get perfection when you compromise, but I think Coloradans expect to see Republicans and Democrats coming together and moving swiftly on final passage for this economic recovery bill," U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, said Wednesday night, before final details of the package were released.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Denver, said, "While I have not had the chance to fully review the terms of the conference report, my position on the need for bold action to address our economic crisis remains unchanged. We need to act - and act now - to pass an economic recovery plan that creates and saves jobs, cuts taxes and gets our economy back on track."

While President Obama had been hoping for wider bipartisan support for the package of new spending and tax cuts, Republican critics seemed little moved by the agreement, which so far has the support of only three GOP senators.

"I am disappointed that the compromise stimulus package which is emerging from closed-door sessions today is still primarily pork, and not a real job creations bill as originally intended," said U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, who joined the rest of House Republicans in voting against the original bill last week.

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, said, "The Senate version is too weak to make a difference to stimulate the economy, but it definitely has enough wasteful deficit spending in it to plunge our nation deeper into debt, ultimately making a full recovery that much harder."

A conference committee spent two days trying to hash out differences between the $320 billion House-passed version and a $338 billion Senate plan, which included a greater proportion of tax cuts to new spending.

A key sticking point was school construction funds. The House-passed version of the bill set aside $226 million for modernization, renovation and construction for Colorado schools. But school construction money was removed from the Senate version.

Dozens of school superintendents from Colorado sent letters to members of the House-Senate conference committee, asking for the funds to be restored.

The final version omits a separate line item for school construction, but compromise language will allow governors to use a portion of state stabilization funds for school renovations. That means extra competition for those dollars, since the final stimulus package will include only $54 billion to prop up cash-strapped state governments instead of the $79 billion proposed in the original House-passed bill.