Another $6 billion in the stimulus bill would help weatherize modest-income homes. Obama has said he plans to weatherize 1 million homes a year.

Critics complained the proposals were an inefficient use of government resources and did not address expanding oil and natural gas production or nuclear energy.

"You're basically diverting tax resources to achieve these goals, when if they were good investments people would be making them anyway," said Thomas Pyle, president of Institute for Energy Research. (Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by David Gregorio)