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WASHINGTON - Administration officials said yesterday that President Obama would emphasize economic issues in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday but that he would also continue pressing Congress to complete its yearlong effort to enact health care legislation.

The officials acknowledged, however, that the bill's fate is uncertain and the final version may bear little resemblance to the proposal Democrats had been on the verge of passing when Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate election gave Republicans the 41st vote they needed to block it.

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, speaking on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' said Democratic leaders are trying to gauge ``what the climate is, what's the art of the possible.''

Fanning out to defend Obama's first- year record on the Sunday news shows yesterday, White House aides blamed the Democrats' loss of the seat - held for nearly half a century by Edward M. Kennedy - on voter frustration with the economy and anger about special-interest influence in Washington. Obama aide David Axelrod argued that it would be ``foolish'' politically for Democrats to walk away from health care now.

``This thing's been defined by . . . insurance industry propaganda, the propaganda of the opponents, and an admittedly messy process leading up to it,'' he said on ABC's ``This Week.''

``But the underlying elements of it are popular and important,'' Axelrod said. ``And people will never know what's in that bill until we pass it, the president signs it, and they have a whole new range of protections they never had before.''

Stunned and deeply frustrated that it had been caught flat-footed by Brown's unexpected surge to victory, the White House is seeking to retool the Democratic political machine heading into the midterm elections, enlisting David Plouffe, the political architect of President Obama's campaign for president, to help the party defend its turf.

``He's enormously talented, as everyone knows, and he brings value added to our operation as we look forward, in terms of strategy and tactics,'' Axelrod said.

But many Democrats saw the Massachusetts election as a clear warning that they must take action on the economy - and fast.

White House advisers argued yesterday that Obama's stimulus package had gone a long way toward preventing catastrophic job loss, that bank and auto bailouts were politically unpopular but necessary, and that the president would offer more initiatives in his speech Wednesday night.

Axelrod did not offer specifics yesterday of the job-creation steps the White House might take, but there have been discussions in Congress of a second economic stimulus package totaling about $175 billion.

In Ohio on Friday, Obama said he is calling on Congress to pass a jobs bill that he says would put more Americans back to work by repairing infrastructure, providing tax breaks to small businesses that hire people, and giving families incentives to make their homes more energy efficient.

Some Republicans, who saw last year's $787 billion economic stimulus as wasteful and considered the bailouts of the auto and banking industries heavy-handed, say the Democratic health care bill shares common problems with Obama's economic policies.

``Massachusetts was a rejection of the president's massive policies of spending and debt,'' Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said yesterday on ABC.

Republican leaders invited Democrats to jettison their health care proposal - ``The American people are telling us, `Please stop trying to pass this,' '' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell - and join them in crafting an entirely new bill, starting with a step-by-step approach to containing health costs.

White House aides also called for bipartisanship, pointing to a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted after the election that showed three-quarters of those who voted for Brown in the Massachusetts race said they wanted him to work with Democrats to get Republican ideas into legislation, not to simply block Obama's agenda. The aides also noted that the same poll showed support for the Massachusetts health care law, which was a model for the federal proposals, remains high.

``The only difference between Massachusetts and the plan that the president has is the plan the president has puts in strong cost controls that protect families from watching their premiums skyrocket,'' White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

But the two parties have starkly different approaches to the health care issue and have shown little genuine interest lately in working together. Democrats want to provide health care coverage to as many of the nearly 50 million uninsured Americans as quickly as possible, and to impose tighter regulations on insurance companies.

Republicans would take a much less aggressive approach, spending less money but helping a much smaller number of people afford to buy insurance by pursuing policies that could help lower premiums, such as reducing frivolous medical lawsuits.

``There are a lot of things we can agree on right off the bat,'' said Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah. ``I have to say big spending issues is where it breaks down.''

The Massachusetts election so rattled Democrats that the administration had to scramble to secure support for Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's nomination to a second term. But White House aides and McConnell said yesterday they were confident he would have enough votes to be confirmed.

Bernanke is widely credited with helping to save the economy from financial disaster over the last 16 months, but many lawmakers believe he should have done more to head off the crisis in the first place and hold him responsible for Fed policies that contributed to the overheated housing market. He has also supported unpopular Wall Street bailouts at a time when unemployment is hovering at around 10 percent.

White House aides cautioned, however, that Bernanke's defeat could hurt the markets and further damage the economy.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.