WASHINGTON — The Senate voted yesterday after two days of emotional debate to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, sending the measure to President Bush for a promised veto, the first of his presidency.

The bill passed 63-37, four votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override Mr. Bush’s veto. The president left little doubt he would reject the bill despite late appeals on its behalf from fellow Republicans Nancy Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“The simple answer is he thinks murder’s wrong,” a White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said. “The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research.”

Senate supporters of the bill likened that logic to opposition suffered by Galileo, Christopher Columbus, and others who were rebuked in their time but vindicated later.

Polls show as much as 70% public support for embryonic stem cell research .

“There has been an upsurge of demand,” Senator Clinton, a Democrat of New York, said. Support for the legislation “has crossed every line we could imagine, certainly partisan lines, ethnic, racial, geographic lines.”

Governor Schwarzenegger of California wrote to Mr. Bush, “Mr. President, I urge you not to make the first veto of your presidency one that turns America backwards on the path of scientific progress and limits the promise of medical miracles for generations to come.”

Mrs. Reagan, meanwhile, had quietly made calls to a few senators to try to build support toward a veto-proof margin in the Senate, but no one was predicting one.

Actress Mary Tyler Moore appeared with Majority Leader Frist during the day, saying she was very disappointed by Mr. Bush’s stance.

“This is an intelligent human being with a heart, and I don’t see how much longer he can deny those aspects of himself,” she said.