Sen. Michael Bennet continues to defend comments repeatedly made in his campaign stump speech saying “we have nothing to show for” trillions in federal debt, brought to national attention by Battle ‘10 in August.
Politico pressed Bennet on the apparent discrepancy between comments that appear to “question the effectiveness” of the stimulus passed last year and his new opposition to infrastructure spending proposed by President Barack Obama:
But Bennet, who has recently been swapping polling leads with Republican nominee Ken Buck, called the stimulus “essential” Thursday morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Washington-based group The Third Way.
“I think the recovery package saved us from falling into not just the worst recession since the Great Depression but another Great Depression. But that’s not saying an awful lot from the vantage point of our kids. That seems to me to be not a sufficient standard for success or for progress, and that’s the point that I was trying to make,” he said.
Bennet said the Crossroads ad “treats the statement as an indictment somehow of what I’m trying to say rather than an indictment of what those guys did, which is the point I was trying to make.”
A new ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee pits Bennet’s “nothing to show for it” comments with video of Bennet saying he was “glad” he voted for the stimulus.