WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday urged Congress not to scale back the Fed's regulatory authority over banks. He said the Fed needs the information it gleans from its bank oversight to set interest rates and gauge the health of the banking system.

A Senate bill to overhaul financial regulation would strip the Fed of its power to supervise state-chartered banks and bank holding companies with assets of less than $50 billion. That would leave the Fed to oversee only 35 big bank holding companies.

President Obama is not worried about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday.

The president, in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, was responding for the first time to the controversy over a plan to use a parliamentary trick to allow the House to pass the Senate's health care bill without forcing members to vote for it directly.

For the first time since President Obama took office, a majority of Americans are not happy with the job he's doing, according to the latest Gallup poll.

In the poll, 47 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's job performance compared to 46 percent who approve.

Obama's job approval rating fell to 46 percent last week, an all-time low for the president.

The deteriorating approval rating comes as the president struggles to push his increasingly unpopular health care plan across the finish line with a controversial maneuver that would avoid a GOP filibuster by allowing Congress to pass and adjust the Senate's bill with a simple majority.

Washington -- Companies that hire unemployed workers will get a temporary payroll tax holiday under a bill that easily won final congressional approval Wednesday.

The bipartisan 68-29 vote in the Senate sends the legislation to the White House, where President Barack Obama has promised to sign it into law.

It will be the first of several election-year jobs bills promised by Democrats to be enacted into law, though there's plenty of skepticism that the measure will do much to actually create jobs. Optimistic.

The Senate cleared an $18 billion jobs bill for President Obama's signature Wednesday, a down payment on what Democrats hope will be a significant election-year investment in boosting the economy.

The measure passed 68-29, with 11 Republicans joining all but one Democrat present -- Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.) -- in support. The bill had already passed the Senate once but the House tweaked it, requiring the second Senate vote before it could go to the White House. President Obama has praised the legislation in the past and plans to sign it.

Even as he lambasted the Senate health care bill, Rep. Dennis Kucinich today said he woud vote "Yes" for the legislation in the House, becoming the first Democratic congressman who originally voted "No" to change course.

"I have doubts about the bill. ... This is not the bill I wanted to support," Kucinich, D-Ohio, said at a news conference today. "However, after careful discussions with President Obama, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi, my wife Elizabeth and close friends, I've decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation.

Here's our explainer on how the "Self-Executing Rule," a.k.a. "Deem and Pass works": The health-care bill would be voted on INDIRECTLY, tucked into what's known as "the rule." The rule essentially outlines the rules for an upcoming vote -- in this case, it would be the vote on the package of reconciliation fixes. By passing "the rule," the House also would "deem" the Senate bill passed (with a "hereby" statement. "We hereby deem..."). The House would then vote on the package of reconciliation fixes.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer today hinted that Democrats may use a controversial parliamentary procedure to pass the health care bill, a tactic that House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor charged would be an attempt to fool the public.

"We're going to have a clean up or down vote on the Senate bill, that will be on the rule," Hoyer, D-Md., said on "Good Morning America" today. "This is not an unusual procedure. We're going to vote on a rule."

With Republicans on the sidelines, the endgame for healthcare reform is playing out within divided House Democratic ranks, where a decisive vote is expected as early as this week.

Since Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority with the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R) of Massachusetts, Democratic leaders have decided to try to pass the Senate's version in the House – in part to avoid the Senate's procedural hurdles as much as possible. The problem is, many in the House don't like the Senate bill and won't pass it.

As the House moves toward a vote on health-care legislation, one possible route to passage involves a procedural measure called a "self-executing rule," or "deem and pass." It would allow House members to pass the Senate's bill by voting not on the measure itself, but rather a "fixes package." Here's a look at the self-executing rule and its role in Congress:

A self-executing rule, which exists only in the House, allows for a "two for one" procedure: When the House adopts such a rule, it simultaneously agrees to dispose of a separate matter, a "self-executed provision," which is specified in the rule itself.

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday introduced legislation to pressure China to raise the value of its currency, a step the Chinese government has adamantly resisted in order to keep its exports relatively cheap.

Arguing that the Treasury Department has failed under successive administrations to combat China's policy of artificially pegging the yuan at low values against the dollar, the bill would compel the department to make such a determination. This could result in import duties.

In the details of the financial reform legislation introduced this week are fundamental changes to the Federal Reserve that would shift power from the regional Fed banks around the country and concentrate it in Washington and New York.

By altering the traditional balance of power, the bill put forward by the Senate banking committee's chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) would recast the workings of the Federal Reserve System, a unique structure set up a century ago to distribute authority and ensure the central bank was not dominated by the nation's political and financial capitals.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Members of Congress on Tuesday threatened Beijing with duties on some of its exports if it fails to revalue its currency, pressuring the Obama administration to label China a currency manipulator.

A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate merges previous legislative efforts to press China to change policies that critics say keep its yuan currency cheap, effectively subsidizing Chinese exports and taxing competing imports.

the battle for healthcare reform is shifting from open-field policy fights to the obscure trenches of procedural warfare, as house democrats look to pass the senate bill without a direct vote. it's a procedure called a self-executing rule

care bill that the senate passed in december, though many house democrats remain opposed to it. one of the options for house speaker nancy pelosi: having the house pass the senate bill but following up with another vote in both chambers on a series

Just in case the process for passing health care wasn't confusing enough already, House Republicans announced a plan Tuesday that would force Democrats to vote on whether they should have a vote.

Adding a wrinkle to the ongoing war of words between the two parties over the propriety of using the "deem and pass" strategy for the Senate health care bill, the GOP will introduce a resolution "ensuring an up-or-down vote" on the Senate bill following "at least one hour of debate" on the measure.

leader steny hoyer said that no final decision had been made on the complex parliamentary strategy, which would allow house democrats to pass the senate's health care legislation without voting on the bill itself. instead house members, who dislike

The Democratic spin explaining why polls show the public opposed to their health care bill is that voters actually like the individual pieces of the bill but have been turned off by the messy process.

Yesterday, Joel Benenson, a pollster for the Democratic National Committee, reported the results of his own survey done for the Service Employees International Union. It claims the difficulty liberals are having in selling health-care reform "centers squarely on perceptions of a breakdown in the legislative process, exemplified by deal-cutting and special deals for the constituents of key swing Senators."

Of all the odd twists and turns in the health care reform debate that climaxes this week, the oddest may be the possibility that a dozen House Democrats will kill the Senate health bill because of fears that it is pro-abortion.

In fact, a straightforward reading of the Senate health bill section on abortion, which was written mainly by pro-life Democrat Ben Nelson (D-NE), finds legislators doing all kinds of gymnastics to stigmatize abortion and prevent any American from even indirectly paying for it who does not want to do so. I am not aware of any other medical procedure that is treated this way in the massive health care bill.

Robert Shrum, Democratic strategist, New York University professor

The House Democrats will have all the leverage they need. Their Senate counterparts will have to stand with them or take responsibility for the most unpopular parts of the Senate bill - for example, the kickbacks and taxes on existing health care benefits. The House will have voted in reconciliation to end them. Do Senate Democrats want to be blamed for them - or be able to say that they, too, voted to stop them? This is far different from the simplistic caricature of the House being forced to pass the Senate bill. If it does, the House will hold the high cards.