President Obama signed the stimulus bill today, playing up what he said were historic investments in the nation's critical needs while promising that today marked the "beginning of the first steps to set our economy on a firmer foundation."

"We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time," Obama said at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

The president, joined by Vice President Biden, members of Colorado's Congressional delegation and other local officials, said the plan will create three and half million jobs by "putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done in critical areas that have been neglected for too long," which he said will "bring real and lasting change for generations to come."

He then ran through specific areas of these "investments," or spending measures, using a number of historical superlatives and invoking some of his predecessors in the process:

• "The largest new investment in our nation's infrastructure since Eisenhower built an interstate highway system in the 1950s."
• "The largest investment in education in our nation's history."
• "The most meaningful steps in years towards modernizing our health care system."
• "We have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health reform than this country has done in an entire decade."
• "Create a newer, smarter electric grid that will allow for the broader use of alternative energy," instead of lines that date back to Thomas Edison.
• "The biggest increase in basic research funding in the long history of America's noble endeavor to better understand our world," akin to Kennedy's call to reach the moon.
• "The most progressive [tax cuts] in our history."
• "Help[ing] poor and working Americans pull themselves into the middle class in a way we haven't seen in nearly fifty years.

He also emphasized the lack of earmarks in the bill, and what he said were unprecedented steps to provide transparency, including the launch today of Recovery.gov.

"With a recovery package of this size comes a responsibility to assure every taxpayer that we are being careful with the money they work so hard to earn," he said.

But still, Obama said it will take more than the recovery bill, which he said "represents only the first part of the broad strategy we need to address our economic crisis." Tomorrow, he will announce a more detailed plan to deal with foreclosures. Press secretary Robert Gibbs also talked with reporters en route to Colorado about the possibility of future stimulus measures in the future - saying it was unlikely, but not ruling it out.

"The President is going to do whatever he thinks is necessary to get our economy moving again," Gibbs said.