After a harrowing day that saw a bloc of pro-life Democrats agree to compromise on abortion language, House Democrats cemented a victory for President Obama with a 219-212 vote for the Senate's massive health insurance overhaul.

Thirty-four Democrats voted against the bill. Obama will likely sign it on Tuesday.

The House had yet to vote on a "reconciliation" bill aimed to "fix" provisions in the Senate bill that House Democrats opposed but viewed as better than nothing.

House leaders on both sides of the aisle gave impassioned pleas before the final vote Sunday night, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praising Obama's leadership and House Minority Leader John Boehner warning against defying the American public.

Boehner was first up with shouts at lawmakers that they can not go back to their constituents and claim to have read the bill, saved money, created jobs or acted openly in their pursuit of the legislation, which was expected to pass with the barest of majorities.

Saying the behavior taken by the House to get the bill passed discredits the Congress, Boehner, R-Ohio, slowly raised his voice as he demanded lawmakers answer simple questions.

"Can you go home and tell your senior citizens that these cuts in Medicare will not limit their access to doctors or further weaken the program instead of strengthening it? No, you can not," Boehner said to shouts of support from his GOP caucus. "And look at how this bill was written. Can you say it was done openly, with transparency and accountability without backroom deals struck behind closed doors, hidden from the people? Hell, no you can't."

Boehner warned lawmakers that they will have to face the music if they vote for the legislation.

"In a democracy you can only defy the will of the people for so long and get away with it," he said.

Despite his dire warnings, Boehner was followed by Pelosi, who won an equally passionate reception from her Democratic colleagues.

"We all know, and it's been said over and over again, that our economy needs something, a jolt and I believe that this legislation will unleash tremendous entrepreneurial power to our economy,"Pelosi said. "Imagine a society and an economy where a person could change jobs without losing health insurance, where they could be self-employed or start a small business. Imagine an economy where people could follow their passions or their talent and without having to worry that their children would not have health insurance."

Pelosi pledged the new legislation would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and save $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years. She added that when it comes to health care, all politics is personal for Americans, including those who are denied coverage for having illnesses when they try to sign up. 

"It's personal for millions of families that have gone into bankruptcy under the weight of rising health care costs. Many, many, many, a high number percentage of the bankruptcies in our country are caused by medical bills that people can not pay," Pelosi said.

"Being a woman will no longer be a pre-existing medical condition," she added. 

Earlier, the House voted 224-206 Sunday to approve the rules for debating the massive bill. House Republicans did all they could to slow the increasingly inevitable march toward the overhaul and were joined by 28 Democrats who voted with Republicans against the rule.  

Republicans also tried to slip in a maneuver to demand a vote of approval on President Obama's pledge to issue an executive order clarifying abortion funding language, but the presiding officer cut off that effort.  That language was meant to appease pro-life Democrats like Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who insisted on stronger language than the Senate's bill on limiting taxpayer money for abortion services provided by insurance companies who will participate in a government-run exchange.

Once the Senate bill is passed, lawmakers were expected to approve a series of "fixes" aimed at getting rid of special deals for some districts and states, including the "cornhusker kickback" for Nebraska and other deals made to win Senate support.

President Obama will have to sign the Senate bill into law before any "fixes" bill goes to the Senate under fast-track rules that would enable Democrats to pass it without facing a Republican filibuster. Democrats control 59 of the Senate's 100 seats, one vote shy of the number needed to overcome bill-killing filibusters from a united GOP.

But senators have given no guarantees they will pass the fixes, which are strictly the wishes of House Democrats.

Any reconciliation package that does get sent to the Senate is facing a block -- or at least a delay -- from Senate Republicans who will try to use "hundreds" of amendments to stop the fixes.

"We're not going to try to drag this out forever with amendments, but I do think it's important to try to amend some portions of the bill and at least use the amendment process to demonstrate to the American people some of the things that are still wrong with this bill," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Much may hinge on the judgments of an unelected figure, Senate Parliamentarian Allan Frumin, who will enforce the so-called "Byrd rule," named after the Democratic senator from West Virginia. The rule holds that any provisions in a reconciliation bill that do not firstly and chiefly affect the budget must be stricken from the measures.

"There are some provisions that have -- clearly, CBO has scored as having zero or no budgetary consequence," said Bill Hoagland, a one-time aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. "They're not important, they're not significant in the grand scheme of things. But just to have one would be enough to create the point of order and, if sustained by the chair, would create this situation where it would have to go back to the House again."

Of course, the parliamentarian's rulings are not the final word in the Senate. That authority belongs to the president of the Senate, currently Vice President Joe Biden.

Leading Democrats hinted on Sunday that they may invoke Biden's authority to shut down the GOP.

"We're going to deal with honest amendments on substance that meet the test of the Senate rules," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "But there is going to come a point when the American people and the people in the Senate are going to say this really isn't about substance, it's all about politics. Now let's make a final decision, up or down vote."

Republicans may also argue that select provisions of the bill impact Social Security, and if that argument carries the day, it would, under Senate rules, effectively kill the bill.

Fox News' James Rosen contributed to this report.

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