The economy and the nation's financial difficulties are front and center in the Colorado Senate race, where vulnerable Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet faces a challenge from tea-party backed Republican Ken Buck in a contest which is still a tossup just weeks from the November election.

Bennet, a Democrat appointed when the previous senator, Ken Salazar, left to become Secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration, is facing off against Weld County district attorney Buck. The slow economic recovery and the federal government's growing budget deficits are drawing the most attention, although differing views on social issues have also been a part of the campaign.

While control of the Senate is not likely at stake with the race, given the need for Republicans to win several more seats than expected, a victory for Buck could be seen as another sign of discontent with the political leadership in Washington.

The race is virtually even with Buck leading Bennet by 2 percentage points, according to poll aggregator Real Clear Politics, using polling data from several organizations obtained over the last 3 weeks.

The pair's debate over economic issues - especially Congressional approval of the economic stimulus package and healthcare reform bills - mirrors the national debate, where Democrats and Republicans offer different approaches toward putting the nation's finances in order. Both candidates acknowledge the long-term debt problems posed by the nation's $13 trillion federal budget deficit.

Buck has mainly focused his campaign message on opposition to increased debt and spending at the federal level. Bennet, who has previously held administrative, business and political roles at the state and local level, is campaigning on solutions to help the U.S. economy improve.

Buck has called the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  - an $800 billion package of tax breaks and new government spending - "counterproductive," since unemployment and the federal deficit have risen despite its passage. Bennet has defended his vote for it. In a televised debate on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, bennet said it "saved us from going into another Great Depression."

The government's non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said in August that the legislation prevented unemployment - which currently stands at 9.6 percent - from rising up to an additional 1.8 percentage points during the second quarter of 2010.

Buck's strategy in the campaign has included tying his opponent to one of the strongest and certainly most visible advocates of both the stimulus and the health care package, President Barack Obama. The President strongly urged passage of the stimulus as a way to combat the recession, despite acknowledging that in the medium and long term, deficits were unsustainable.

Republicans are "counting on you to forget who caused the mess in the first place," the President told a crowd at a rally in Columbus, Ohio on Sunday night. "And now they ... want you to believe the election is a referendum on the economy, a referendum on me."

Among Bennet's proposals for reforming the federal government's finances are efforts to establish a "nonpartisan debt commission with teeth to propose cuts as necessary," and a plan to cap Congressional spending and the deficit at 3 percent of GDP, which happens to be the same figure the Eurozone economic union requires of its member nations. The deficit currently stands at 8.9 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Bennet, who has also called "exploding health care costs" "the biggest single driver of out-of-control federal spending," proposed an amendment earlier this year to the current health care overhaul law that would require it to meet its budget projections or be changed. Although the measure failed, Bennet has vowed to continue improving the bill.

The candidates also have differences over two of three major parts of the federal budget - Social Security and Medicare. Both have been silent on the third large expense, the military.

Buck's plan on Social Security calls for keeping the system intact for retirees, saying the government must fulfill its' "sacred promise" to them. However he is advocating increasing the age of retirement and "means testing," which could reduce the amount of money paid out to individuals depending on their income level. For younger workers, Buck says Social Security will be a safety net, "but they should also be encouraged to save more through tax-preferred accounts."

Bennet says Social Security faces a "solvency challenge" which should be resolved but says he strongly opposes "privatizing" it or reducing benefits.

On healthcare, Buck favors repealing the recently passed healthcare overhaul and replacing it with market-oriented reforms while Bennet does not, saying instead that core aspects of the Affordable Care Act need to be left in place although some changes are needed.

Buck's solutions include tax deductions to allow individuals to buy their own insurance, encouraging purchases of high deductible polices and the use of health saving accounts, while only "hard cases" should receive relief, especially people who have been denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

"We need to let the market work, make people responsible for their own insurance, and restore Americans' freedom to decide for themselves whether and how much insurance to buy," he said.

Bennet opposes a repeal because of the gains in coverage that would be lost.

"I'm not going to repeal it because people with pre-existing conditions will again be denied health care coverage," he said.

Neither candidate has much to say on defense spending but their views on the ongoing war in Afghanistan diverge on the strategy being employed.

While Bennet supports the current Obama administration's deadline which would start bringing troops home by July 2011, Buck said he "opposes artificial timelines."  Still, Buck doesn't think the U.S. should be in the country over the long term.

The candidates have also sparred on social issues.

Buck believes that abortion should only take place when the mother's life is at risk, and opposes it in the cases of rape and incest. Bennet believes people on both sides of the issue should work to make abortions rare, and associated medical procedures as safe as possible.

In the debate, during a lightning round of questions, Buck said he believed homosexuality was a choice and that birth has an influence over it in a similar way to alcoholism, a view which Bennet called "outside the mainstream."

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