NBC News has received a copy of former Congressman David Wu's (D-OR) letter to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announcing his resignation. Kitzhaber, as governor is responsible for setting the date of the special election to replace him, which will take place Jan. 31 (with a primary Nov. 8).

The hand-written, two-page, letter is on Wu's congressional letterhead and was received by the governor yesterday. In it, Wu writes, "However great the honor and engaging the work, there comes a time to hand on the privilege of office. That time has come. With gratitude to the people of Oregon and confidence that our best days are yet to come, I hereby resign as their United States Congressman for the First Congressional District of Oregon, effectively immediately."

Wu also sent a letter of resignation to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), which Boehner's office says it has received. It will be laid before the House tomorrow during the pro forma session.

Below is the text of the letter. (Attached is a PDF of the letter.)

August 3, 2011

Dear Governor Kitzhaber,
Serving as a United States Congressman has been the greatest honor of my life.  There is no other job where you get up every day and ask, "How can I try to make the world a better place today."

Of particular significance to me in this effort to improve the world is investing in more and better science and education.  Also, I believe my support of people around the world who are struggling for human rights and civil liberties will ultimately bear fruit in a world which is more just and peaceful.

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However great the honor and engaging the work, there comes a time to hand on the privilege of office.  That time has come.  With gratitude to the people of Oregon and confidence that our best days are yet to come, I hereby resign as their United States Congressman for the First Congressional District of Oregon, effectively immediately.

God bless the people of Oregon and the United States of America.

I am, very gratefully yours,
David Wu

In an interview NBC's Andrea Mitchell, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that the debt deal -- which she voted for -- was a "bad deal," but that it's now time to move on. 

"It’s a bad deal but it’s a done deal, and it’s time for us to move on," Pelosi said in the interview, which aired on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "It’s the basis on which we are going to proceed and we have to get on with it."

Could President Obama have done a better job negotiating? Pelosi's answer:

I think the president was great. But, again, what is the point of talking about what is finished? On anything that happens around here, any one of us could have done it better, right? We could have written it better, we could have, whatever it is. But the fact is the president wanted a balanced, bipartisan agreement at the end of the day.

MITCHELL: But he didn’t get a balance. There’s no taxes in it.

PELOSI:  That’s right, nobody knows that better than I or perhaps some do, but I fully appreciate that. But again, this is about how we go to the next steps: jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. 

Another interesting exchange came when Mitchell asked if Congress was broken.

PELOSI: This is the marketplace of ideas. This is where people come and represent their constituents on the short term, every two years. And so it’s always been a contentious people. People had duels in those days, canings, and the rest.

MITCHELL: But how do you feel now to have people saying things like Congress is ridiculous, it’s messy?

PELOSI: Well, I agree with that. I think that the whole process has been -- makes people angry, makes people disgusted. And I don’t think that we should have the legitimate debate about budget priorities with the sword of Damocles over our head. If not, we’re going to default. I don’t think that that was the appropriate dynamic, but that’s done, and now we’re moving on. 

And Congress for its whole entirety has been an institution that has been mocked. The real -- the difference now is in communication, real time, in fact, quicker than real time, before anybody has a chance to process what’s going on, people have formed an opinion and gone on. It’s a very healthy, good thing. 

In a bipartisan 269-161 vote, the House of Representatives passed the debt-ceiling deal that President Obama and congressional leaders struck last night. The legislation now moves to the Senate, where it's expected to pass easily.

Perhaps overshadowing the House vote was the return for Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D), who voted for the debt deal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signed off on a debt-ceiling agreeement with the White House and congressional leaders -- pending caucus approval -- his spokesman Adam Jentleson said in an email message to reporters.

This statement came after Reid and Democratic leaders emerged from almost two hour meeting in House Minority Leader Nancy's Pelosi's office.

The final hold up? A GOP source with knowledge of the debt talks tells NBC News that the "last hurdle" to arriving at a deal has to do with cuts to the Defense Department.

In the event that the special commission -- or "Super Congress" -- fails to reach an agreement, and automatic cuts are triggered, the Obama administration would like to see Defense cuts equal 3% of its annual budget in the first year.

The GOP is saying that is way too high, and would like that number to come down to 2% or less.

Reporters caught Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid walking from his office to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office on the House side. His message: There's not a deal yet, but getting one before the Aug. 2 deadline is in sight.

"We don't have the content of what the trigger would be," he said. "We have a few things we're still working on and there simply not done yet."

When asked if he's closer to a deal, Reid replied, "Well, closer than yesterday, but we still have a ways to go."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel appeared on "MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell" reports earlier today, calling Speaker Boehner’s decision to add a balanced-budget amendment vote to his bill a “political” move.

“You know, look, let's not be fooled this balanced-budget term. It is not a balanced budget,” the congressman from New York said. 

“They are not interested in balanced budgets,” he continued, referring to House GOP members. “They are interested in one thing and one thing only; making the rich much, much richer and making the middle-class much, much poorer. And that is why you get delay after delay after delay.  nd that is why, as the clock runs out, instead of meeting in the middle, they are lurching further and further to the extreme right wing.”

Despite his frustration with some of his colleagues from across the aisle, Israel said he still thinks a bipartisan deal can be reached if both sides meet in the middle.

“Look, you know, I have never been in a situation where everybody agrees on what cannot happen, but one party refuses to agree on what can happen,” he said.  “And that's where we are now... I hope that good sense prevails, and that they don't do the political thing -- but they do the right thing by the American people.” 

It appears that Speaker John Boehner has fixed his debt legislation to get the GOP support needed to pass it in the House.

The fix: Before President Obama could request a second debt-ceiling increase -- which would come in early 2012, under the Boehner bill -- a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution would have to pass both the House and the Senate. (The Senate has already tabled House GOP legislation that includes the Balanced Budget Amendment.)

With this revision, House GOP members left their conference meeting this morning optimistic that Boehner's new plan would pass the House.

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) left the meeting and says the new Balanced Budget Amendment stipulation has changed him from a "no" to a "yes."

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who was a definite "no" yesterday -- "bloodied and beaten no," as he put it -- is now on the fence, leaning on "yes."

Others were optimistic but skeptical of the new bill, saying they needed to see if before they made a decision.

The problem that this revised legislation now has, even if it passes: It will have a very difficult time getting 60 votes to clear the Senate.

"They have basically given the right wing even more than they have before," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters. "What is being done in the House is not a compromise."

Then he added about his own legislation, “The only compromise that there is, is mine.”

Congressman Chris Van Hollen, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, hinted at the possibility of a deal between House and Senate leaders to raise the debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline.
 
"If you can create a mechanism so that if you don't get the deficit savings through the normal process, you have these triggers that guarantee that deficit savings in a balanced way through both spending cuts, but also revenue, then you can get there," Van Hollen said on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports."
 
The Maryland Democrat said this would be possible because it would guarantee deficit reduction, so that congress could "extend the debt ceiling for whatever period of time" it wants.
 
"We have always said we should have triggers in order to provide that guarantee that you get the deficit reduction. What's always happened is that our Republican colleagues have refused to have balance," he said.

Echoing White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe's declaration that House Speaker Boehner's bill is D.O.A. in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on the Senate would table the GOP legislation.

Today the House of Representatives will vote on Speaker Boehner’s short-term plan to raise the debt ceiling. As soon as the House completes its vote tonight, the Senate will move to take up that bill. It will be defeated. No Democrat will vote for a short-term Band-Aid that would put our economy at risk and put the nation back in this untenable situation a few short months from now.

A Reid spokesman tells First Read how the Boehner legislation is tabled: "As soon as the Senate receives the House Message (Boehner bill), a motion to concur with the House Message is made. The Leader moves to table the motion to concur (majority vote threshold). The Boehner plan is defeated in the Senate."

Indeed, Reid needs only 51 votes to do this, and then he can bring it back up if need be (if/when they compromise).

First Read this morning asked if the White House and Senate Democrats would blink on the issue of Boehner's two-part debt limit extension versus Reid's one-step extension.

In an appearance on "Daily Rundown," White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe didn't explicitly say President Obama would veto a two-step plan. But he emphasized that Senate Democrats would never accept it, saying Boehner’s bill “is never going to get to” the president’s desk.

“We should stop talking about the Boehner bill, as if it's some recipe for solution here,” Plouffe said. “It's dead on arrival.”

Ultimately, he added, the final bill may be a combination of the Boehner and Reid proposals. “What you're going to have to do is reconcile what's in Reid and Boehner.”

Willamette Week

Rep. David Wu wearing a tiger costume that was sent to staffers, who became alarmed about his mental health. The photo is an Oct. 2, 2010 file photo provided by the Willamette Week newspaper to the Associated Press.

AP reports and NBC'S Frank Thorp confirms: "Democratic Rep. David Wu of Oregon has announced that he is resigning from Congress."

*** UPDATE *** This comes after it was revealed this past weekend that the troubled congressman had been accused by a teenage girl of an unwanted sexual encounter. Wu's behavior has been erratic and alarmed some staffers when he sent them a photo of himself in a mascot-like tiger suit.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had called for an ethics investigation into Wu.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Here's Wu's statement, per NBC's Thorp:

It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be a United States Congressman. Rare is the nation in which an immigrant child can become a national political figure. I thank God and my parents for the privilege of being an American.

Now, however, the time has come to hand on the privilege of high office. I cannot care for my family the way I wish while serving in Congress and fighting these very serious allegations.

The wellbeing of my children must come before anything else. With great sadness, I therefore intend to resign effective upon the resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis. This is the right decision for my family, the institution of the House, and my colleagues.

It is also the only correct decision to avoid any distraction from the important work at hand in Washington. I intend to go forward with new resolve and love of family, the State of Oregon, and our nation.

First Read has confirmed that six-term Arkansas Congressman Mike Ross (D) will not seek re-election next year, according to a Democratic source.

Ross is reportedly eyeing a gubernatorial bid in 2014.

Ross' congressional seat won't be easy for Democrats to hold next year. Obama won just 39% of the vote in the district in '08.