After lurking in the background for weeks as Congress moved slowly on health care reform, Barack Obama is stepping into the spotlight. Today at 1:05 p.m. ET, he'll deliver remarks on the topic from the White House Rose Garden. Then tonight both CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News will air health care interviews with the President for a much larger audience.

Since returning from abroad this weekend, his growing involvement in the process has been striking:

• On Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama might consider asking Congress to delay adjournment in order to pass legislation before the August recess.
• Later that day, Obama met with House and Senate health care leaders and upped the pressure, particularly on Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to get moving.
• This morning, Obama's political arm, Organizing for America, launched an ad campaign directed at conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, who are on the fence about key aspects of his health reform goals.
• In a statement praising the advancement of the Senate HELP Committee's reform bill this morning, Obama reiterated the importance of passing health care reform legislation in both houses of Congress before the August recess.

And, as mentioned above, he'll take similar messages to network television this afternoon and this evening. It's pretty clear he's stepping up his game ahead of the August recess. That deadline is important to him for a number of reasons, and it's hard to imagine him stepping into the limelight like this if he wasn't worried that Congress might not meet it.