Colorado: Harry Reid

Signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Denver, Colorado

February 17, 2009

It is great to be in Denver. I was here last summer to accept the nomination of my party and to make a promise to people of all parties – that I would do all I could to give every American the chance to make of their lives what they will and see their children climb higher than they did. I am back today to say that we have begun the difficult work of keeping that promise. We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time.

A lot has changed in Colorado since Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president here in August. Thousands more Coloradans are unemployed or on public-assistance rolls — or both.

Governments are struggling to close multimillion-dollar budget gaps. A local school district is even considering a four-day week just to cut costs.

With all that in mind, reporters set out Monday to ask Coloradans what they would like President Obama to hear during his visit to Denver today. Reporters looked for workers and business owners who are weathering the recession without complaint, and those who are hurting.

GARY HALL, 55, DENVER

Two college degrees. Unemployed.

Newly appointed Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, right, greets voters at an open house Jan. 25 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Bennet is part of a group of centrist senators working on a compromise stimulus bill. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

Colorado’s two freshman senators, both Democrats, are part of a bipartisan group that spent Thursday forging a proposal to trim up to $100 billion in spending from the economic stimulus bill in hopes of winning support from moderate Republicans and Democrats who have complained the package devotes too much money to programs that won’t create jobs fast enough.

“The American people are expecting this to be a recovery bill, not a Christmas list,” said Sen.

It will be about money, connections and identity politics; about who you know at the highest echelons of Democratic power and at the party's base in far-flung counties.

Those are the things that will matter as Gov. Bill Ritter makes that rare decision in an executive's career: handing a U.S. Senate seat over to someone who doesn't have to earn a single vote.

But if winning the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of state voters in a general election is tough, winning the governor's appointment to the seat Ken Salazar will soon vacate won't be much easier, Democratic insiders say.