Both presidential campaigns were focused on Colorado Tuesday as President George W. Bush and Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards swung through to battle for the state's crucial nine electoral votes.

Bush is in Colorado for the second day, following a fund-raising event for Senate candidate Pete Coors and a rally at Red Rocks Amphitheater.

He told supporters in Colorado Springs, Colo., Tuesday morning that John Kerry cannot pay for the domestic programs he is proposing unless taxes are raised on the middle class.

"As much as he's tried to obscure it," Kerry is a confirmed liberal, Bush said in a run-up to Wednesday night's final debate. The presidential debates have "showed differences between the senator and me on issues ranging from jobs to taxes to health care to the war on terror," said the president, who underscored the importance that health care could play in the debate in Tempe, Ariz.

Bush said he has the answers to fix the health care system and that he won't wreck the federal budget in doing so.

He stressed the need for growth of community health centers to serve the poor and said the newly enacted legislation to revamp Medicare is helping senior citizens. He said Kerry's proposed changes would put millions of people looking for health care into "a government program."

"With a straight face he tried to tell Americans that ... the government has nothing to do with it," Bush said.

Edwards' fourth visit to Colorado took him to Commerce City, where he hosted a town hall meeting at 10 a.m. at Adams City High School.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards campaigned on a message of more jobs, a better economy and better access to education when he hosted a town hall meeting at Adams City High School in Commerce City, Colo.

"The American dream is on the ballot," Edwards told a crowd of about 1,700 in the high school gymnasium.

He said President Bush will be the first president in more than 70 years to end his term with a net loss of jobs, adding that 69,000 Coloradans have become unemployed while Bush has been in office and 150,000 more don't have health insurance.

Democratic Senate candidate Ken Salazar introduced Edwards, saying he understands the problems of ordinary Americans.

"He's a man like most of you, from humble beginnings. He's not going to forget where he came from," said Salazar, who faces Republican Peter Coors in the Nov. 2 election.

Federico Pena, a former Denver mayor who was energy and transportation secretary under President Clinton, urged Hispanics to vote for the John Kerry-John Edwards ticket.

Only 45 percent of eligible Hispanics voted in 2000, he said, and he hopes 60 percent turn out this time.

"Twenty one years ago, I was running for mayor of Denver. One of the reasons I won was that the Hispanic community voted in record numbers," he said.

The visits by Edwards and Bush showed how important Colorado is in the presidential race.

Bush's campaigning in the conservative heart of Colorado is an effort to counter Kerry's surprising bid to win a state that has voted Republican in nine of the past 11 presidential elections. One poll shows Bush ahead in Colorado; another shows the two men in a close race.

At a Red Rocks rally, the president ridiculed his Democratic opponent for saying in an interview published Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they're a nuisance."

Bush said Kerry "fundamentally misunderstands" the battle on terror.

"Our goal is not to reduce terror, to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror, spreading freedom and liberty around the world," Bush said.

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The Kerry campaign said Bush has taken the nuisance comment out of context.

The Kerry campaign then circulated a 2-year-old comment from Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser in the first Bush administration, who said the United States can break the back of terrorism "so that it is a horrible nuisance, and not a paralyzing influence."

On Monday, Kerry lashed out at Bush, who has taken to calling the Democrat a tax-and-spend liberal with a 20-year Senate record of voting in favor of tax increases.

The record price for oil "means a lot more profit for this president's friends in the oil industry. But for most middle class Americans, the Bush tax increase is a tax increase that they can't afford," Kerry said in New Mexico.

Kerry is not scheduled to make any appearances Tuesday. He is said to be preparing for his third and final debate with Bush, which will take place Wednesday evening at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz.

Nationally, a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll taken Saturday and Sunday showed Bush and Kerry in a statistical dead heat, with 49 percent for the Democrat and 48 percent for Bush among likely voters. The poll's margin of error was 4 percentage points.

In a state where the military is an integral part of the culture, retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on hand to introduce his former commander in chief, calling him a man with "the character not to tie but to win against the terrorists."

It is a difficult time for Colorado Springs, where 7,000 troops stationed at nearby Fort Carson are returning to Iraq in the coming months for a second tour of duty. During the first deployment of 12,000 troops last year, more than 40 were killed and more than 500 were wounded.