President Barack Obama, summoning the House's Democrats to the White House midday for one more push before expected action on the healthcare legislation Sunday, is turning the focus of his weekly address to next week's start of action on financial regulatory reform in the Senate.

The bill which the Senate Banking Commmittee is taking up Monday "would provide greater scrutiny of large financial firms to prevent any one company from threatening the entire financial system - and it would update the rules so that complicated financial products like derivatives are no longer bought and sold without oversight,'' the president says in his weekly radio and Internet address.

"These reforms include a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to prevent predatory loan practices and other abuses to ensure that consumers get clear information about loans and other financial products before they sign on the dotted line,'' the president says.

The fact that the president has moved on to another front -- after devoting 13 of his weekly addresses to healthcare -- suggests a certain confidence in passage of his signature domestic initiative after making one final public push for the healthcare bill Friday in Virginia.

The House's Republicans are focused on something else today in their weekly address: Putting a spotlight on the tactics that House Democrats are employing to pass a healthcare bill which has picked up a few more Democratic supporters in the closing days but still has more than 200 opponents in a chamber that will need 216 votes to pass it. The Rules Committee is meeting today to clear the way for a procedure that could bypass a roll-call vote on the Senate-passed healthcare bill as the House takes up a package on Sunday that reconciles differences between the two. The House on Sunday will debate both the Rules Committee's recommendation and the final bill.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, delivering the GOP's weekly address today, reiterates his party's complaints with the healthcare bill that the House is considering this weekend -- "government takeover,'' new taxes, Medicare spending cuts and more -- but also speaks of it as something of a lost cause for opponents.

He is demanding a roll-call vote on all matters this weekend, as House Democratic leaders weigh a "deem and pass'' procedure that could enable them to simply the deem the Senate-passed healthcare measure as having passed as they vote on their 170-page package of changes that will reconcile the House and Senate on the issue.

"Democrats are so afraid of the public's outrage that they have devised a strategy that would allow them to force this massive bill through Congress without even voting on it,'' Boehner (R-Ohio) says in the weekly address for teh GOP. "It's outrageous, and it's an affront to the principles of representative democracy.

"We were elected to make tough choices, not run from them. And this vote is certainly one of the toughest.,'' Boehner says. "With that in mind, I asked Speaker Pelosi to have the final health care votes recorded by a 'call of the roll.' Under this procedure, each lawmaker will have to stand before the American people and announce his or her vote.''

See the president's address above, the minority leader's address below, and read the texts of both below, here in The Swamp.

The songs of children are floating on the evening air.

We live in a neighborhood of Alexandria. Va., just 10 minutes from downtown Washington, where a lot of families from El Salvador and other points south have settled in recent years, and tonight, a splendid pre-Spring, shirtsleeve evening with a slice of the new moon in the clear, starry sky, voices of children are rising from another yard.

They are giggling in Spanish. The music on their radio, playing softly in the near-distance, plays in two languages -- Lady Gaga in English, the stars of another world unfamiliar to this writer's ear singing in Spanish. Their elders reply in soothing tones to their children's queries. The children laugh, though it seems bedtime is nearing.

Across the river, the president of the United States, a son of Kenya and Kansas, this week has hailed the efforts of two senators, one Republican and one Democratic, to find a path toward "immigration reform'' that leaders have been seeking for decades. The last president, a Republican from Texas, campaigned with a pledge to forge that path. The new president, a Democrat from Illinois, has pledged lately to purse that path, in the midst of many other controversies that challenge the authority of his own presidency.

We have fielded in these electronic pages lately many sentiments about all of this, some of it mean-spirited, some of it loving.

The meanest have spoken of sending all of these children home, wherever that may be, when in fact home for millions of them is America. Many millions of their parents arrived here undocumented -- illegally, we are reminded by the least forgiving of our readers. All of them want what we wanted for our own children, a better life, in a better place.

The more sympathetic voices have been drowned out lately by a chorus of reactionary revolt, a fear for a nation changing.

Tonight, as we slowly draw on a Cuban cigar that arrived here undocumented as well -- we will never reveal our sources -- with a new moon in a clear sky on the eve of Spring, we relish the voices of children headed for bed, eagerly awaiting a new day. And we wonder when the promise of a great nation will be secured for them and their families.

The pursuit of that promise could well doom the political career of a president and the lawmakers attempting to help him reform the laws of a "broken border,'' one which has admitted many hundreds of thousands of families to settle in this place that affords such luxury for the rest of us who were born here -- like the children of the immigrants.

Those leaders, and these families, will consider success well worth the effort. Amnesty, the opponents of all this derisvely call it.

The children deserve no less. And the parents raising them.

"I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,'' the radio broadcasts in one last flurry of channel-flipping for a family settling down for the night. And a Cuban is good to the last draught.

There will be a big rally in Washington on Sunday for immigration reform, the same day that the president is pursuing health care for millions of uninsured Americans. In the effort to appease critics, lawmakers have asserted that none of this will benefit the illegal, the children. That's a sad sentiment, a regrettable line in the sand.

It's growing quieter now, in that other yard now.

Goodnight, Moon.

If it seems like you've heard a lot from President Barack Obama about healthcare lately, it's because you have: Obama, who has delivered 54 speeches or statements on healthcare, has turned to the subject one in five times since the start of the year.

Our good colleague Mark Knoller, the CBS Newsman at the White House who not only chronicles, but also keeps count -- he's the source of our notes that former President George W. Bush spent more than a year of days at his Texas ranch during his two terms as president -- has been keeping count of Obama's healthcare talks.

"Since launching his campaign for health care reform with a White House forum on March 5th of last year, Mr. Obama has delivered 54 speeches and statements on the issue,'' Knoller reports today. "He has done health care events in 12 states, some of them more than once. He's done nne 'town hall meetings' on health care and made it the focus of 13 of his Saturday radio and Internet addresses.

"There are those who say we should defer health care reform once again -- that at a time of economic crisis, we simply can't afford to fix our health care system, as well,'' the president said in March of 2009.

And today, appearing at a college campus in Virginia for his 54th talk on healthcare, the president said: "You've got a whole bunch of opponents of this bill saying, 'Well, we can't afford this; we're fiscal conservatives.' Not only can we afford to do this, we can't afford not to do this."

By Knoller's count, and you can take it to the news bank, friends, Obama has made 471 speeches, remarks and comments "on every issue under the sun since taking office 423 days ago. His 54 statements on healthcare reform mean that better than one in 10 was on healthcare. Since the first of this year, it's been nearly two in 10.''

(President Barack Obama is pictured above at his 54th talk on healthcare, today, at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he also appeared during the early weeks of his campaign for president, before anyone started counting speeches. Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images)

As we're preparing for the House's debates this weekend -- and expected action Sunday -- on sweeping heatlhcare legsilation, our friends at ProPublica have assembled a ready-friendly way of navigating through the changes that the House leadership proposes to the Senate-passed bill.

See the side-by-side look at the healthcare bills here.

It offers more than a summary of changes, with the proposed new language included. Changes -- either subtractions or additons to the Senate bill -- are color-coded for easy tracking. And there is a previous change/next change button for navigation.

So far, ProPublica says, its comparison has revealed "new revisions to the laws governing student loans and changes to the law governing tax credits for biofuels.'' Their investigative forces are "still digging for more. Maybe we can help them.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest It is led by Paul Steiger, aformer managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and former investigative editor of The New York Times,

ProPublica is headquartered in Manhattan.

Go take a look at the healthcare changes, and come back and tell us what you thiink. Tell them The Swamp sent you. And thank them for their effort, as we are.

The "Slaughter solution.''

It could become the most memorable catchword of the healthcare debate unfolding with expected House action -- approval, the way leaders are talking -- on Sunday.

As most know by now, this is not the nickname for what Democrats are planning to do to Republican opponents this weekend -- or what Republicans predict the voters will do with Democrats in November. It comes from the name of the chair of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D- N.Y.), who proposed it.

Simply put, it enables the House to simply "deem'' that a Senate-passed healthcare bill of some 2,300 pages already has been passed while the House votes on the 170-or-so page package of fixes that will reconcile the House and Senate on the issue. That, in turn, will return to the Senate for approval by a 51-or-more vote majority under budget reconcilation, another procedural move that is raising howls among Republicans.

"The American people are going to hear about every payoff, every kickback and every sweetheart deal that comes out,'' House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised today. "And if Democrats really do use the Slaughter solution to pass this bill without voting on it, that vote in and of itself will be just as controversial as the bill...

"However this bill gets through the House or if it gets through the House, there's no way any member's going to be able to hide from the vote,'' Boehner told reporters today. "And this whole idea that you can move this bill without voting on it makes absolutely no sense to me. And, you know, if they attempt once of these gimmicks, I'm sure constitutional scholars will be all over it.''

President Barack Obama, who made his final public push for passage in the House today, maintains that he is not concerned about congressional "procedure,'' but rather the outcome of legislation which he promises will be historic.

"You've got a good package, in terms of substance. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate,'' Obama said in an interview with FOX News Channel this week. "The issue that I'm concerned about is whether not we're fixing a broken system. The key is to make sure that we vote -- we have a vote on whether or not we're going to maintain the status quo, or whether we're going to reform the system.

""Whatever they end up voting on... it is going to be a vote for or against my health care proposal. That's what matters. That's what ultimately people are going to judge this on... Somebody who votes for this bill, they're going to be judged at the polls. And the same is going to be true if they vote against it."

Which, after all, is what Boehner is saying, too.

The American Medical Association today announced its support for the healthcare bill, despite some elements and omissions from the bill that have unsettled the doctors' lobby.

"The pending bill is imperfect, but we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good," said AMA President Dr. James Rohack, in a conference call with reporters. "Key to our deliberations on this legislation was the fundamental fact that the status quo is simply not acceptable."

Rohack called the pending action on healthcare, "an opportunity that we are not likely to see again for at least a decade," and said that under the bill, "the patient-physician relationship is protected."

Rohack said the AMA was pleased that the bill would extend coverage to millions of Americans, provide investment for quality and wellness, and reduce administrative burdens.

The AMA isn't so pleased with the creation of an independent payment board that would have jurisdiction over Medicare spending. Rohack said the board "could result in misguided payment cuts."

The association also is pressuring Congress to pass a separate bill to repeal the formula that has caused a looming 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The House had included in an earlier version of healthcare legislation a provision to address this issue - nicknamed the 'doc fix,' - but the fix isn't in the final bill. (It carried a price tag of nearly $250 billion.)

"We will hold Congress's feet to the fire on getting that done before this Congress adjourns," Rohack said.

President Barack Obama, framing this weekend's expected House vote on healthcare as "historic,'' called today on Congress to rise above politics and do something for the good of millions of Americans.

The president, who has taken his campaign for healthcare legislation to Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania in recent weeks, made his final public pitch for the plan today at a college campus arena in nearby Fairfax, Va., before an expected House vote on Sunday.

"A few miles from here, Congress is in the final stages of a fateful debate about the future of health insurance in America,'' Obama told his audience today. "It's a debate that's raged not just for the past year, but for the past century...

"It's a debate that's not only about the cost of health care... It's a debate about the character of our country - about whether we can still meet the challenges of our time, whether we still have the guts and the courage to give every citizen, not just some, the chance to reach their dreams,'' the president said in shirtsleeves at a boisterous, campaign-styled rally at the Patriot Center, an arena at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. - Obama had campaigned there in his bid for the White House.

"We didn't have a lot of money,'' Obama said of his appearance just weeks into the start of his campaign. "We didn't have a lot of staff. Nobody could pronounce my name. Our poll numbers were quite low.''

Obama's job-approval ratings have slid to a new term-low of 46 percent in both the Gallup Poll and a Pew Research Center survey this week as a contentious debate over healthcare has consumed Capitol Hill. Republican leaders maintain that Democrats will face "a price to pay'' in the November midterm congressional elections if this bill passed.

House Republican Leader John Boehner vowed again today to do everything possible to keep the bill from becoming law.

"Now, listen, I know the president's doing the hard sell on this bill, telling Democrat members that his presidency is on the line,'' Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters today.

"But this vote isn't about saving a presidency or saving a politician,'' he said. "This is about doing the right thing for the American people. And so Americans are jamming the phone lines here on Capitol Hill. They are screaming at the top of their lungs that they stop, just stop. Republicans are listening, and we're standing with them.''

The president, likening news coverage of the healthcare debate to Sports Center - "rock 'em, sock 'em robots'' - mimicked the chatter of the cable television news media with flapping fingers. "What they like to talk about is the politics of the vote. What does it mean in November.... What's it going to mean for Obama?'' the president said. "Will his presidency be crippled, or will he be 'the comeback kid....'

"I don't know how this plays politically,'' he said. "Nobody really does.... I don't know whether my poll numbers go down or they go up... I do know that this bill, this legislation, is going to be enormously important for America's future.''

The president has attempted to frame the debate as "a vote for reform,'' with opponents poised to vote against reform.

"The time for reform is now,'' he said today. "We have waited long enough. In just a few days, a century-long struggle will culminate in a historic vote.''

President Barack Obama, who spent four years as a child in Indonesia, says he is looking forward to a helping of bakso (pronounced bah-so), a meatball soup, when he returns to Jakarta -- a trip now delayed until June by the healthcare fight at home.

Obama, who lately has attempted to place more focus on employment in the aftermath of a damaging recession, also has called that healthcare legislation in an interview with Indonesian television "the most important domestic priority in the U.S.'' He will make one final public push for it today at a college campus rally in Virginia.

Obama is "as disappointed as anybody'' that he had to postpone Sunday's planned trip, already delayed by three days by the White House's interest in pressing for a House vote on the healthcare bill, he said in the interview. That vote now is expected Sunday.

"Passage of health insurance reform is of paramount importance,'' the White House said Thursday in a statement announcing the trip's delay, "and the president is determined to see this battle through

In the interview that aired today in Indonesia on RCTI, the nation's largest commercial television network, the president assured Indonesians that he is looking forward to this trip and regrets the postponement. Moving the trip to June will also enable a less hectic schedule there, the president told RCTI's Putra Nababan on Thursday.

"Please let them know Im just as disappointed as anybody," said Obama, who attended school in Jakarta for four years after his divorced mother married an Indonesian -- a statue of the young Obama (pictured here) first erected in a public park in the Jakarta neighborhood where he lived has been moved to the school that he attended after some protested that an Indonesian should be honored in the park.

"The only reason we delayed this is because the most important domestic priority here in the U.S. is going to be voted on this weekend or early next week and I have to be there,'' the president inaugurated as Barack Hussein Obama, a Christian who has reached out to the Muslim world with an address from Cairo, explained to a TV audience today in the largest Muslim nation.

Not only has President Barack Obama's job approval reached an all-term low -- 46 percent -- in the latest Gallup Poll daily tracking surveys.

His disapproval rating also has reached a high point, and that 48-percent disapproval in today's results of the last three days' daily tracking polls stands two points higher than Obama's approval rating -- a flip in the balance of support for a president whose approval stood in the high 60s in the days following his inauguration (though the two-point spread is within the polling margin of error.)

""President Barack Obama's job approval is the worst of his presidency to date,'' Gallup's Jeffrey Jones reports today.

That matches a new low recorded in the latest Pew Research Center polling of the president's approval ratings, which Pew reported today. Pew's survey measured Obama's disapproval rating at 43 percent.

"The new low ratings come during a week in which the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are working to convince wavering House Democrats to support healthcare reform, which they hope to pass using a series of parliamentary maneuvers in the House of Representatives and Senate,'' Gallup's Jones notes.

Obama isn't alone in the public's eye -- Congress stands much lower, both Gallup and Pew have found.

"Public support for President Obama and Congress -- both of which were running near their low points prior to the beginning of this month -- continues to slip,'' Jones writes. "That is an ominous sign heading into this year's midterm elections. As of now, Gallup's tracking of congressional election preferences suggests a close House race, and a much worse performance for Democrats than in the 2006 election that restored the party to majority status in Congress.''

The latest findings of Gallup's tracking come from three days of surveys, a sample of 1,478 adults conducted March 15-17, with a possible margin of error of four percentage points.

Never mind the substance of the healthcare legislation that all the House's Republicans stand prepared to oppose -- the House is heading toward a vote on Sunday, with the White House voicing optimism today that it will pass Sunday.

Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican who has his share of memorable lines to his name, complained on Glenn Beck's radio show today about the Sunday vote.s

Put down your plows, get in your trucks and head for Washington, Rep. King implored, warming: "They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God.''

Host Beck replied: "Fath has been perverted.... They're trying to sell this hope that we'll have faith in our government, that they'll be charitable....

"You couldn't have said it better,'' Beck told King and Beck's radio listeners. "Here is a group of people that have so perverted our faith and our hope and our charity, that is a -- this is an affront to God. And I honestly, I don't think anybody is like, "yes, and now what we'll do is we'll vote on the Sabbath." But I think it's absolutely appropriate that these people are trying to put the nail in the coffin on our country on a Sunday -- something our founders would have never, ever, ever done. Out of respect for God.''

Maybe not the founding fathers.

But on Palm Sunday of 2005, as the folks at Think Progress note today, "the Republican-controlled Senate passed a controversial bill to allow a federal court to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo. The House passed the same bill shortly after midnight on Monday morning.''

President Bush signed the so-called "Palm Sunday compromise.''

Now King has been no shrinking violet in his criticism for the other party. He made a few waves back during the 2008 campaign when he told an Iowa radio station this about candidate Barack Obama:

"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been. I'll just say this: When you think about the option of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?"

"I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."

The war goes on, without the dancing, but King has suggested that Obama has lost his "mojo'' since election. He said so at the Conservative Politcal Action Conference -- at least it was on a Friday that King told his audience this:

"President Obama has lost his mojo. (Obama) had more mojo than any president I remember when he was inaugurated a year and a month ago. But now, the Master Mesmerizer has lost his mojo. And if we stand our ground as constitutional conservatives, he's not going to get it back."

Not that Beck has pulled any punches either.

Hear King and Beck, together, here:

The Obama White House, which already had pushed a planned Pacific and Asian trip back three days because of the ongoing healthcare debate, announced today that Obama will delay his trip to Guam, Australia and Indonesia until June.

With the earliest time for a House vote on the healthcare bill now apparently Sunday, the White House was juggling a Sunday departure for the president.

"It just at that point seemed obvious to us that the best course of business was to reschedule Australia and Indonesia for June,'' Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said at a press briefing in the Rose Garden just now. The White House did not want to have to call foreign leaders on Sunday and say the trip is off.

"The president is disappointed, based on the relationship we have with a growing democracy -- a country that is the largest Muslim country in the world,'' Gibbs said, noting that Obama also had given an address to the Muslim world in Cairo and is looking forward to visiting a nation where he lived for four years as a boy. "But we'll get a chance to visit both countries in June.''

What about a domestic dispute delaying an international trip, what message does that send to other nations? Obama has spoken with the leaders of Australia and Indonesia about the delay, Gibbs said. "Each of these two countries understands what the president is working on... and the importance... of seeing it through..

"The president believes that, right now, the place for him to be is in Washington, seeing this through.''

The White House dismissed suggestions that the trip's delay is a sign that the legislation is in trouble, as House leaders struggle to amass the votes needed for passage. "I think healthcare is going to pass the House on Sunday,'' said Gibbs, and the Senate will act soon afterward.

Can the president still 'walk and chew gum at the same time?'' one television network reporter asked of the juggling of domestic and international affairs.

"I can confirm that,'' Gibbs said.

So President Barack Obama finally sat down with FOX.

The president spoke at length about his healthcare plans, in an interview aired last night on FOX News Channel's Special Report with Bret Baier.

But FOX's Baier also got a few words of his own in -- in a program that drew more viewers than even Glenn Beck could corral last night.

"The interruptions were unusual, because most news organizations... tend to defer to the office of the president in matters of conversational decorum,'' a rival cable news network MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell said. "Also, it is just impossible to imagine anyone from FOX interrupting former President Bush or Vice President Cheney in the manner'' that Baier did with Obama last night.

"The interrupt-a-thon,'' Newsweek's Katie Connolly called it.

"Baier-ly substantive,'' the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart called the interview.

"Trying to get the most for our buck here,'' Baier told Obama of his interruptions, which Obama downplayed as the news host just doing his job.

FOX, for its part, simply billed it as what it was: an Exclusive.

The Special Report with Obama averaged nearly 3 million viewers, beating FOX's Glenn Beck for the night and finishing second to The O'Reilly Factor. It marked Baier's 8th highest-rated night since he debuted as host in January 2009, according to Nielsen Media Research, which counted 2.9 million viewers for Baier's show, 2.45 milllion for Beck's show and 3.65 million for Bill O'Reilly's show -- the top-three programs on cable news networks for the night.

Here's their talk:

The Obama administration plans to purchase a state prison in rural Thomson, Ill., regardless of whether Congress allows terrorist suspects to be transferred there, a Department of Justice official said today.

In a letter to a member of the Illinois delegation to Congress, Asst. Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich spelled out the administration's intent to go ahead with plans to buy the near-empty Thomson prison, even if lawmakers refuse to approve its use as a new home for detainees at the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At the very least, Weich said, the federal Bureau of Prisons intends to use the facility for high-security federal inmates. The letter comes in response to questions from Rep. Donald Manzullo, the Republican who represents the area in Congress.

The Department of Justice has asked for $237 million in next year's budget to buy and begin operating the facility in Thomson. It also has the option of requesting funds sooner than that to upgrade the security provisions at the prison and prepare it for its intended use.

President Obama has directed the agency to buy the facility "to fulfill both of the goals of reducing federal prison overcrowding and transferring a limited number of detainees out of Guantanamo," Weich wrote in the letter. The Thomson prison is critical to Obama's plan to shut down infamous Guantanamo prison, which administration officials consider to be a recruiting tool for anti-American extremists worldwide.

However, the department "would be seeking to purchase the facility in Thomson even if detainees were not being considered for transfer there," the letter says.

Such an assurance could ease some objections to the Thomson purchase by members of Congress. Some are worried about the political and security fallout of moving terror suspects to a domestic site. Unless Congress changes current law, Guantanamo inmates couldn't be transferred to the U.S. for any purpose other than trial.

Yet that accommodation could raise concerns from local and state officials anxious for the jobs that would come with the expanded use of the facility.

The Department of Defense's operation would involve one third of the prison's space, though the number of Guantanamo detainees to be moved there is uncertain. The Bureau of Prisons would use most of the prison.

Manzullo has voiced support for opening the Thomson Correctional Center as a federal prison because it would provide jobs for the area. He has said he has "serious reservations" about moving Guantanamo detainees there.

President Barack Obama used a jobs bill signing ceremony today to lobby for his healthcare overhaul and to argue that bipartisanship can get things done.

In a Rose Garden ceremony, Obama signed bipartisan legislation that includes about $18 billion in tax breaks for employers and injects about $20 billion into highway and transit programs.

But the president started his remarks by praising his healthcare overhaul, which got a boost this morning with a Congressional Budget Office scoring that put the cost at $940 billion over the next decade.

Obama pressed the deficit-reduction properties of the bill, expected to be considered over the weekend by the House. Like House leaders earlier, Obama stressed that the healthcare bill would cut federal deficits by $1.3 trillion in next 20 years.

"That makes this legislation the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the Balanced Budget Act in the 1990s," Obama said, a lobbying pitch to conservatives as Democrats seek to find the 216 votes needed to pass healthcare overhaul in the House.

But Obama's comments were directed at Republicans as well as he again touted the virtues of bipartisan action. Republicans staunchly oppose the pending healthcare bill, but some voted to pass the jobs bill that the president signed.

"I want to commend all of those members of Congress whose leadership made this bill possible, many of whom are with us today. I'm also gratified that over a dozen Republicans agreed that the need for this jobs bill was urgent, and that they were willing to break out of the partisan morass in Washington to help us take this forward step for the American people," Obama said.

"I hope it is a prelude to further cooperation in the days and months to come, as we continue the work of digging out of this recession and rebuilding our economy in a way that works for all Americans."

(President Barack Obama is pictured above at the West Wing Colonnade as he arrived to sign the "HIRE Act,'' a bill encouraging businesses to hire workers, in the Rose Garden. Photo by by Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images)

The Congressional Budget Office today estimated the cost of the proposed healthcare overhaul at $940 billion over 10 years, a scoring that clears the way for a House vote as soon as Sunday.

Democrats greeted the number with joy, because it was less than the $1 trillion price tag that they were using as a ceiling, and it includes a projection for greater deficit relief over the next two decades. Republicans immediately pledged to fight the bill through its convoluted parliamentary route in the House and the Senate.

"We're absolutely giddy over the great news we have gotten from CBO," Rep. James Clyburn, (D-S.C.) the House majority whip, told reporters.

The CBO scoring sets the stage for the Democrats' push to collect the 216 votes needed to pass the bill, scheduled to be publicly unveiled later today. Democrats have pledged to allow 72 hours for public study, meaning the soonest the vote could come is on Sunday, when President Barack Obama is scheduled to fly to Asia.

In hoping to win support from conservative Democrats, leaders immediately stressed that the overall bill will cut the deficit by more than $100 billion in its first decade and by $1 trillion in the second decade.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was beaming after she emerged from a caucus meeting with House Democrats this morning.

"We love their number," she said of the score from the Congressional Budget Office. "We told (our members) we would stick with this bill until we had the savings that were necessary. And it took some time. But we are very pleased."

Pelosi said proposed fixes to the Senate-passed bill actually have increased the projected savings to the federal budget over the next two decades.

After the caucus meeting, Indiana Rep. Baron Hill, a conservative Democrat whom leaders were trying to stop from switching from yes to no on the healthcare legislation, said he was closer to supporting the bill.

"I'm pretty happy about the numbers," Hill said. "That moves me a step forward."