WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to provide the jobless with up to 20 weeks in additional unemployment benefits and expand a home buyer tax credit program that has given a boost to the dormant housing market.

The $24 billion bill, which also provides tax relief for struggling businesses, passed 98-0. The House is expected to follow suit within days, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law.

The $2.4 billion extension of unemployment benefits gained bipartisan support after it was written to cover all states, making it more appealing to senators. Everyone will receive 14 weeks of additional benefits, while those in states with unemployment rates of 8.5 percent and above, such as Illinois and Missouri, get six weeks on top of that.

The current national unemployment rate is 9.8 percent and is expected to move into double digits before companies start rehiring, despite a recent improvement in gross domestic product. The benefit extension would be the fourth since June of last year and the first since passage of the $787 billion stimulus package last February.

Despite the previous extensions, up to 600,000 people have already exhausted their benefits, and an additional 700,000 are scheduled to lose them by the end of the year, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Congress has no choice but to act when there are 15 million jobless chasing 3 million jobs and 7,000 people run out of benefits every day, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. Economists talk about the end of the recession, he said, but "for most Americans, it will still be some time before things start getting better."

One area that saw some signs of recovery over the summer was home sales, due in part to an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers that was enacted as part of the stimulus package in February.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted to extend the credit, which was to expire this month, to April 30, and expand the program to include a $6,500 credit for house buyers who have owned their current home at least five years.

The bill also would increase the level of qualifying incomes to $125,000 for individual tax filers and $225,000 for joint filers. Those earning up to $145,000 individually or up to $245,000 jointly would receive a smaller credit that decreases as income rises.

The tax credits apply to home purchases of $800,000 or less.

The new $6,500 credit for existing homeowners, said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a co-sponsor of the measure, "is going to help us boost what is the problem in the U.S. housing market today and that is what is called the move-up market."

The first-time home buyer credit was created in mid-2008 and set at $7,500 in a stimulus law signed by President George W. Bush as the housing and economic crisis took hold. It was raised to $8,000 in the $787 billion economic recovery package that Obama shepherded into law, and the law also dropped requiring home buyers to repay the credit over 15 years.

Of the 1.4 million home sales in which the credit figured, about 350,000 to 400,000 were believed to be a result of its availability, the real estate industry and independent economists estimated.

Extending the credit would cost about $1 billion a month, congressional analysts say.

The measure also strengthens the ability of the IRS to stop people who are not eligible for the program from filing fraudulent claims. Last month, government investigators reported that audits suggest widespread abuse and errors in the program.

The third leg of the bill extends to all businesses that have incurred losses in 2008 and 2009 to seek refunds for taxes paid on profits over the past five years.

The two tax credits, each costing more than $10 billion over 10 years, are paid for by delaying enactment of a law giving international companies more leeway in how they allocate interest expenses between U.S. and foreign sources in determining tax liabilities.

The $2.4 billion cost of extending unemployment benefits is offset by extending through June 2011 the federal unemployment tax that employers pay for each employee.