Tag: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

11:00 a.m. - Once again, Denver is the center of the political universe for a day. In roughly a half hour, Air Force One is scheduled to touch down at Buckley Air Force Base to deliver President Barack Obama to Colorado. Obama will be revisiting the city where he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in August to sign the landmark $787 billion economic stimulus package, the first in a series of administration efforts to fix an economy stuck in the worst recession since World War II.

President Barack Obama is expected to land at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora momentarily and will make his way to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to formally enact the $787 billion stimulus package.

With all the hoopla surrounding President Barack Obama's visit to Denver today, we're still left with the paltry-by-stimulus-bill-standards $64,000 question: what will the $787 billion cash infusion actually do?

Will President Barack Obama rewrite the history books on how the West was won? The Colorado Independent talks to University of Denver finance professor Mac Clouse and political science professor Susan Sterret on the city's prominent role in the Democrats' resurgence and what that newfound power portends for the region's economic future.

Rep. Diana DeGette's arduous eight year battle to repeal President George W. Bush's 2001 executive order to restrict federal funding on embryonic stem cell research may be resolved with a similar flick of the presidential pen, says a top aide to Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama plans to sign the $787 billion economic stimulus package, passed Friday by the House and Senate, during a visit to Denver on Tuesday, CNN first reported. Obama wants to get out of the nation's capital and sign the bill “out west in an area hit hard economically, away from the politics of Washington," a senior administration official told CNN. Another official told CNN Denver was picked for the historic signing because it is “a place that will see the benefits of the bill in hiring workers.”

The National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) is finally putting its money where its mouth has been. A round of radio ads targeting 30 Democrats in conservative or swing districts began airing Friday -- among the targets were freshman Rep. Betsy Markey and third-term Rep. John Salazar of Colorado -- who plan to vote in favor of the $790 billion economic stimulus package.

President Barack Obama will be in the Denver metro area Tuesday as part of a nationwide tour "to convince Americans his economic stimulus plan will get the job done," The Denver Post reports.

The president is planning stops in Denver and Phoenix on Tuesday and Wednesday. That comes on top of a whirlwind of travel this week: Obama was scheduled to be in Peoria, Ill., Thursday afternoon after visiting Indiana, Florida and Virginia earlier. A source told The Denver Post that Obama would be in the Denver-metro area Tuesday and that the White House is looking for a work site at which Obama can tout green energy components of the $798 billion federal stimulus bill.

Now, we're finally getting somewhere. Beyond the boorish political posturing and ideologically-driven amendments, there are some encouraging elements in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help alleviate the effects of the recession.

How’s this for absurdity? Citing unnamed Democratic officials, The Associated Press reports that there’s “pressure” on Congress to drop the executive pay limits for bailed-out banks as lawmakers reconcile the differences between the House and Senate stimulus bills. The reason? It would cost taxpayers too much.