Washington ? One month after President Barack Obama declared jobs his “number one focus,” Congress has been unable to push through a single measure aimed at putting people back to work, as lawmakers haggle over how best to create jobs and how much to spend in the face of soaring budget deficits.

On Friday, Obama’s jobs agenda stalled on both ends of the Capitol. In the House, leaders delayed a vote until next week on a Senate plan to extend tax breaks to employers who hire new workers after the proposal drew fire from liberals, who called it weak medicine for a 9.7 percent jobless rate, and conservatives, who griped that it would worsen a deficit projected to approach $1.6 trillion this year.

In the Senate, Jim Bunning, R-Ky., blocked a vote on a House-passed bill that would have extended emergency unemployment benefits past Sunday, arguing that lawmakers should come up with a plan to pay for it. As lawmakers left town for the weekend, more than a million people, by one estimate, were in danger of losing federal aid by the end of March.