At the bill-signing ceremony today for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama was introduced by Vice-President Biden.

“To state the obvious, this is a historic day,” Biden said. The vice-president spoke glowingly of Obama, saying that the president’s leadership “charts a fundamentally different path for the country.”

Obama’s efforts “put the final girder in a social network” to provide the access to health insurance that Biden called a “fundamental right.”

“You’re the guy who made it happen,” Biden said.

Perhaps the most amusing moment came when Biden passed the podium off to President Obama with an embrace. As the two men hugged to a round of applause, microphones picked up Biden telling Obama “this is a big f—ing deal.” (language warning)

In his own remarks, the president called the bill the “biggest middle-class tax cut in history” and repeated a highly-dubious claim about the bill’s deficit-reduction effect in its second decade.

Obama acknowledged that Demcorats in Congress had “taken some lumps” for support of health-care reform, to which Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman (N.Y.) responded from the crowd: “yes we did!” But Obama said he is “confident” that the Senate will adopt House fixes to the bill “swiftly.”

He heaped praise on both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, saying both were among the “best” Congressional leaders “in history.”

The actual signing of the bill took some time, as the president used a total of 22 pens to sign the 18 letters of his name. As he finished, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Coverage Act became law, Obama remarked “we are done.”