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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama stepped up criticism of Republicans on Saturday for blocking jobless aid, hammering home a Democratic election year attack line that casts the opposition as the party of the rich.

"Too often, the Republican leadership in the United States Senate chooses to filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress. And that has very real consequences," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Senate Republicans have blocked at least three Democratic initiatives to extend unemployment insurance, citing the need to curb government spending amid a record budget deficit.

"Think about what these stalling tactics mean for the millions of Americans who've lost their jobs since the recession began. Over the past several weeks, more than two million of them have seen their unemployment insurance expire," the president said.

Obama has made job creation his top domestic priority and has traveled repeatedly to the U.S. heartland to tout policies that lift hiring, including to Holland, Michigan, on Thursday for the groundbreaking of an electric car battery factory that has received federal dollars.

U.S. growth has resumed after the worst recession in decades, thanks in part to a $862 billion stimulus plan Obama signed last year.