White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Thursday ratcheted up the pressure on Congress to complete health-care legislation by setting March 18 as the deadline by which a final bill should be passed.

Noting that President Obama leaves that day on a trip to Indonesia, Guam and Australia, Gibbs said on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” with Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie that “we believe that we’re on schedule, based on our conversations with the speaker and the majority leader, to get something done by then.”

Gibbs, who on Wednesday echoed the president by saying the bill should be passed in the next “few weeks,” used slightly different language in his MSNBC appearance, saying that “I think this is going to get done in the next couple of weeks.”