With Vice President Joe Biden by his side, President Barack Obama signed the much-debated stimulus bill Tuesday in Denver. The $787 billion program is designed to breathe life into the country's failing economy.

Speaking in Denver, the city where he won the Democratic presidential nomination last summer, Obama said the massive government spending and tax cut program opened the road for Americans to begin "laying claim to a destiny of our own making."

The president put his signature to the bill in a highly unusual ceremony away from the partisan tensions still gripping Washington. As he spoke in Denver, he was closing out his first month in office—opening days of a new administration that have seen a relentless storm of economic bad news and public pessimism.

In remarks before signing the bill, Obama cautioned Americans not to expect a quick or dramatic economic turnaround and said government intervention was not at an end. The stimulus "doesn't constitute all we're going to have to do to turn our economy around."

Source:  MSNBC.com, Obama: Stimulus Lets Americans Claim Destiny