Washington ? Newly empowered Republicans want spending cuts of $5 billion to $6 billion a month as a condition for extending emergency unemployment benefits that are scheduled to expire next month for millions of Americans.

Up to 2 million people could lose the benefits — which average $310 a week nationwide — during the holiday season if the still Democratic-controlled Congress doesn’t act in the postelection lame-duck session. The expiration could affect as many as 5 million by the end of February.

With new employment figures Friday showing 14 million Americans still out of work last month and an unemployment rate stuck at 9.6 percent, President Barack Obama renewed his call for another extension “to help those hardest hit by the downturn while generating more demand in the economy.”

But there’s no way that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP senators would support an extension unless they’re accompanied by equivalent spending cuts, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said.

Every recession since 1950 has featured an extended federal benefits program financed with deficit dollars. That’s a precedent Democrats refused to break when battling with Republicans for months earlier this year to extend the program through Nov. 30.

Two Maine Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, broke with their party this summer to give Democrats the needed 60 votes to pass the most recent of several extensions, which adds more than $30 billion to the national debt.