U.S. President Obama embarks on a two-state bus tour Monday during which he will press Congress to pass his jobs bill, even if in stages, the White House said.

Obama will begin his three-day tour of North Carolina and Virginia by flying first to Asheville Regional Airport in Fletcher, N.C., then traveling by bus, the White House said.

In mid-morning remarks at the airport before boarding the special armored bus, Obama is to push for more federal spending to improve the nation’s roads, bridges and airports.

He also is to speak about 5 p.m. at a high school in Millers Creek, N.C., to press for a provision in his $447 billion jobs bill to assist local cities and towns with money to prevent teacher layoffs.

The Senate defeated the bill last week by refusing to let it come up for a vote. So now Obama is seeking to get his bill’s individual proposals to the Senate floor for a vote as soon as possible, the White House said.

On Tuesday, Obama is to hold a roundtable with teachers at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., and make remarks at an Emporia, Va., YMCA and at a Hampton, Va., high school.

First lady Michelle Obama will join him Wednesday at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., to talk about hiring service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama later will visit a firehouse in North Chesterfield, Va., before returning to the White House.

“In the public events that are scheduled for each day, the president will challenge Congress to get to work this week passing every element of the American Jobs Act, piece by piece,” White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters in a conference call Sunday.

Obama himself said in his Saturday radio address he wanted to “remind Congress that’s their job.”

“The American people support every single plank of that bill, and we’re going to vote on every single one of them,” Obama re-election campaign adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told “Fox News Sunday” Obama should “stop the campaigning. Let’s go find the things that are in common between [the GOP] plan and his.”

Senate Republicans made a counter-offer to Obama’s bill Thursday.

Cantor said helping small businesses get money, reforming unemployment insurance and spending money on infrastructure were areas where Republicans and Democrats have expressed support.

“We’re not going to be for tax increases on small businesses,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the GOP to “get off of this kick of saying that the only thing that will create jobs is to lower taxes.”

Speaking at a Las Vegas conference Sunday, he said, “If lower taxes was a way to a great economy, during the George Bush years, we would have been on fire economically, but we weren’t.”