President Obama is trying to halt a slow descent of his once sky-high political fortunes amid signs that Congress may balk at the price of health care reforms and voters want more him to focus more on cutting federal deficits.

Today he will hold a Rose Garden press conference at the White House where warning lights have flashed in recent days over polls that indicate his long honeymoon with the American public could be nearing its end.

By any measure Mr Obama remains hugely popular, but his approval ratings have slipped over the past three months from the mid-60s to an average of 58.7 per cent. A survey by Rasmussen yesterday found just 54 per cent of voters say he is doing a good job, the lowest proportion since his inauguration.

Although other polling organisations suggest he is doing better than that, they also show a sharp drop in support among independent voters and growing doubts about the Administration’s high-spending policies.

Peter Hart, a pollster who conducted a Wall St Journal/NBC survey this month, said Mr Obama is still receiving a bouquet from Americans “but there are a lot more thorns in [it]”. A CBS /New York Times Poll last week found that by 52 per cent to 41 per cent, voters would prefer him to reduce ballooning trillion-dollar annual federal deficits rather than spending to stimulate the economy.

Yesterday the President heralded an agreement with the pharmaceutical industry, cutting $80 billion (£49 billion) from the cost of providing drugs to old people, as “a significant breakthrough on the road to health care reform”.

He reiterated that he expected Congress this year to enact flagship legislation — still supported by the overwhelming majority of voters — for extending health care to millions of uninsured Americans.

“To those who’ve grown accustomed to sky-is-falling prognoses and the certainties that we cannot get this done, I have to repeat and revive an old saying we had from the campaign: ’Yes, we can’. We are going to get this done,” he said.

Last week Republicans and some fiscally-conservative Democrats reacted with horror to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office that proposals for this flagship legislation would cost more than $1 trillion - while buying coverage for only a third of America’s 47 million uninsured. It later priced a second version of health care legislation, which would cover two thirds of those without insurance, at $1.6 trillion. Diane Feinstein, a senior Democratic Senator, suggested at the weekend that concern about these costs might mean Mr Obama lacks the votes needed to get a Bill through Congress this year.

At a Democratic fundraising dinner last week, however, Mr Obama urged his party to brace itself for tougher times ahead. “This is when the criticism gets louder, this is when the pundits grow impatient,” he said. “This is when the cynicism mounts. This is when we hear the same voices advocating the same old policies that got us in this mess in the first place. This is when we hear that the change we seek just isn’t possible.”

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