During the question and answer session of today's town-hall in Fort Meyes, President Obama paused briefly to announce that the Senate had just passed its version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (by a vote of 61-37). "That's good news," the President said, "that's good news."

UPDATE: Since the House of Representatives passed its own, different version of the bill two weeks ago, the Senate and the House will now form a conference committee to resolve their differences and come to an agreement on a final version of the bill. Both houses will then vote on the conference report.

The Senate conferees will be Harry Reid (D-NV), Dan Inouye (D-HI), Max Baucus (D-MT), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Thad Cochran (R-MS). They will be joined by conferees from the House: which have yet to be appointed who are David Obey (D-WI-07), Charlie Rangel (D-NY-15), Henry Waxman (D-CA-30), Jerry Lewis (R-CA-41), and Dave Camp (R-MI-04).

CongressMatters.com points to a report from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress that explains the conference committe procedures:

The House and Senate must pass the same bill or joint resolution in precisely the same form before it can be presented to the President. Once both houses have passed the same measure, they can resolve their differences over the text of that measure in one of two ways: either through an exchange of amendments between the houses or through the creation of a conference committee .... to propose a single negotiated settlement of all their differences.

Conference committees generally are free to conduct their negotiations as they choose, but they are to address only the matters on which the House and Senate have disagreed. Moreover, they are to propose settlements that represent compromises between the positions of the two houses. When they have completed their work, they submit a conference report and joint explanatory statement, and the House and Senate vote on accepting the report without amendments. Sometimes conference reports are accompanied by amendments that remain in disagreement. Only after the two houses have reached complete agreement on all provisions of a bill can it be sent to the President for his approval or veto. 

... When the conferees reach full agreement, their staffs prepare a conference report that states how they propose to resolve each of the disagreements. Accompanying the report itself is a joint explanatory statement (or statement of managers) which describes the various House and Senate positions and the conferees' recommendations in more detail. A majority of the House managers and a majority of the Senate managers must sign both the conference report and the joint explanatory statement. Each chamber then debates and votes on the conference report in turn. 

President Obama hopes to have the legislation on his desk by next Monday, which is Presidents' Day.