The future of coal as a source of electric power in the United States was a dominant theme Thursday as President Barack Obama’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency faced her confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Although nominee Gina McCarthy seems likely to be confirmed, the hearing was a chance for Republican senators to complain about the economic impact of EPA regulations, especially on coal producers. It was also a chance for Democratic senators to argue that the costs of air pollution and climate change were the bigger dangers. 

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., mentioned to McCarthy the asthmatic children in his state who were unable to go to summer camp, while Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., cited forest fires as well as acidification of the oceans affecting oyster production in his state as some of the costly climate change effects.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Gina McCarthy testifies before a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on her nomination to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on Capitol Hill in Washington April 11, 2013.

Republicans have deep misgivings about the power Congress has delegated to the EPA and the expansion of that power by court rulings, especially the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide and other gases are pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Depending on how McCarthy administers EPA regulations and on court challenges to them, the energy playing field could be further tilted in favor of newly abundant domestic natural gas as a source of electric power -- and against coal.

Even before McCarthy sat down at the witness table, Republican Sen. John Barrasso – who represents the state which produces 40 percent of American coal, Wyoming – fired a warning shot in Thursday morning’s Wall Street Journal, charging that “As head of the EPA's office on air quality since 2009, Ms. McCarthy has been a leader in the administration's war on fossil fuels.” Barrasso continued his criticism of the EPA regulations’ impact on coal at the hearing, telling McCarthy that “your extreme emission rules that you’ve imposed on U.S. power stations are forcing coal companies to make up for lost domestic customers by exporting more to countries in Asia.”

Barrasso said the EPA has urged the Army Corps of Engineers to take into account the greenhouse gas impact of allowing coal to be shipped overseas from West Coast ports. “Not only have you blocked the use of coal in power plants domestically, but now you’re recommending that an American product not be able to be shipped and sold overseas,” he complained. 

“I want to thank Sen. Barrasso,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I- Vermont, after the Wyoming Republican finished his statement. “He made it very clear what this whole discussion is about…. It is a debate about global warming and whether or not we are going to listen to the leading scientists of this country who are telling us that global warming is the most serious planetary crisis that we and the global community face....” 

When Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., reminded McCarthy that at her 2009 confirmation hearing she’d said that coal was a vital natural resource and asked her whether she’d changed her mind on that, she calmly replied, “Not at all, senator.”

On Tuesday energy secretary nominee Ernest Moniz also lent rhetorical support to coal, at his confirmation hearing, saying that “we see coal as being a continuing, major part of the energy supply in the United States, and certainly, in the world.”

He said if researchers could devise a way to store large amounts of CO2 and “reduce the cost of carbon capture dramatically,” then  coal would be “very, very competitive” with other energy sources,

At her hearing Thursday, McCarthy did her best to mollify Republican senators, at one point pledging to Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., that she would “build a more trusting relationship” and continually promising that “I’m more than happy to work with you” and “I’m more than happy to go back and look at it” when a GOP senator made a particular complaint about an EPA rule.

But among Republicans, the feeling is that EPA has become impossibly remote, powerful and inscrutable. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., told McCarthy the agency has “extraordinary power over Americans, with the power to impact their lives in ways I don’t think Congress contemplated when they authorized this agency or contemplated when it passed the Clean Air Act” in 1970.

But EPA’s regulatory impact is far wider than on coal, as Sessions illustrated when he descended with McCarthy into the byzantine world of EPA regulations on brick and ceramic manufacturing – the “Brick MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology)” rule – which spawned a litigation saga that has been playing out for more than a dozen years. A Sierra Club lawsuit led the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order EPA to rewrite its rules for brick makers. Under a consent decree EPA must come up with final rules by the summer of 2014.

In questioning McCarthy, Sessions pleaded the cause of small Alabama brick firms that have struggled to cope with the cost of EPA rules, both before the 2007 court decision and after. McCarthy promised Sessions that she would be “incredibly sensitive” to the effect of the brick regulations on small brick manufacturers.

As with bricks, so too with coal and climate change. With Congress highly unlikely to enact new laws on carbon dioxide and other emissions, everyone at Thursday’s hearing knew the battles ahead would be fought in the courts. 

If you can’t legislate, then regulate. 

President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda may end up depending as much on regulation and subsidization as it does on legislation.

Faced with a Republican-controlled House that rejects most of his legislative goals, and facing potential opposition from Senate Republicans and a half-dozen Democratic senators on issues such as gun control, Obama’s ability to carry out policy changes hinges on his Cabinet and his appointees running regulatory bodies.

Larry Downing / Reuters

President Barack Obama stands next to air quality expert Gina McCarthy, who will lead the Environmental Protection Agency in the East Room of the White House, March 4, 2013.

Three Senate confirmation hearings this week put the focus on the regulatory agenda: First up on Tuesday is Obama’s nominee to be energy secretary, MIT physics and engineering professor Ernest Moniz. On Wednesday is the confirmation hearing for Sri Srinivasan, an Obama nominee to the federal appeals court in Washington where most of the regulatory agenda will be litigated and could be struck down. And on Thursday comes the confirmation hearing for Gina McCarthy, Obama’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Moniz hearing will draw attention to Obama’s energy agenda. The president sounded a clarion call in his State of the Union address, proposing to use oil and gas lease revenues to create a fund to “drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.” Even if Congress doesn’t enact that idea, Obama said that he would direct his Cabinet “to come up with executive actions” to reduce pollution, prepare for climate change impacts, “and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

With Moniz at the witness table before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday, the question remains: What role should federal subsidies play in any transition to non-fossil fuel energy? A related question: Should the United States allow the export of its newly abundant energy supplies, such as natural gas, or should it aim for a kind of energy self-sufficiency?

The Department of Energy has applications pending from 24 proposed Liquefied Natural Gas projects to export the natural gas produced in part by the boom in production of U.S. shale gas.

If confirmed, Moniz will need to decide the future of natural gas export policy. Bill Cooper, president of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, a trade association of LNG producers, shippers, and terminal operators, said, “The decisions that have been made at the Department of Energy that have caused this de facto moratorium (on LNG exports) are all internal decisions and not driven by statute or existing regulations. Therefore, he has a unique opportunity to come in and change that.”

Moving on from Solyndra failure
Loans and loan guarantees to alternative energy firms were the hallmark of Obama’s first-term energy policy. Those programs were created by the 2005 and 2007 energy bills that President George W. Bush signed into law and were expanded in the 2009 stimulus program.

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist Ernest Moniz smiles during his nomination by President Barack Obama to run the Energy Department on March 4, 2013 in the East Room of the White House.

But as the the Government Accountability Office -- the government’s fiscal watchdog agency -- reported last month, loan guarantee activity has slowed or in some cases halted at the Department of Energy.

The after-effects of the loss of $535 million in taxpayer money in a loan to Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt in 2011, are still being felt. The GAO report said, “Some applicants (for Energy Department loan guarantees) noted that the Solyndra default and other problems have created a negative public image and political environment for the program, which has made its future less certain” and made Department of Energy bureaucrats “more cautious about closing on loan guarantees.” The Energy Department still has about $51 billion in unused loan and loan guarantee authority.

If confirmed, Moniz can decide how to direct the loan guarantee programs and cope with post-Solyndra taint.

Kit Kennedy, the clean energy counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said, “It’s very important that Secretary Moniz, assuming he is confirmed, reboots the narrative on clean energy. Despite the great work Secretary (Steven) Chu did on clean energy, the Solyndra story stuck with him and got in the way of progress -- and Prof. Moniz is going to have to overcome that and be very clear with the American people about the jobs benefits and the economic benefits of energy efficiency and clean energy.”

Complicating Moniz’s job is the vast portfolio he must manage, ranging from issuing energy efficiency standards for refrigerators to overseeing the massive cleanup of millions of gallons of radioactive waste -- a legacy of the nation’s nuclear weapons programs since World War II -- at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state.

The GAO reported last December that because some Hanford Site contamination had reached the groundwater, DOE officials were “concerned that the contamination is now making its way to the Columbia River,” which borders Hanford and is a source for hydropower, irrigation, drinking water, and salmon habitat. Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Sen. Ron Wyden, D- Ore., whose hometown of Portland is downstream from Hanford, has said the cleanup will be one focus of his questions to Moniz on Tuesday.

'Fragmented' energy initiatives
Another complication for the new energy secretary is the fact it’s not the Department of Energy alone that's responsible for energy policy.

The GAO reported last month that it found 82 federal wind-related initiatives which had handed out $1 billion in subsidies, but were run by nine different agencies, in fiscal year 2011. The 82 initiatives, GAO said, were “fragmented across agencies, most had overlapping characteristics, and several that financed deployment of wind facilities provided some duplicative financial support.”

Economist Peter Grossman, a critic of U.S. energy polices who teaches at Butler University and author of "U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure", said Moniz “has experience both as an administrator and as a researcher; he's somewhat controversial among environmentalists for his open mind about fracking (hydraulic fracturing in natural gas drilling) and LNG exports and his support for nuclear power.”

Grossman said if he could question Moniz at the hearing, he’d ask, “Do you think energy independence should be a serious goal of U.S. energy policy and if so, could you explain just what you mean by energy independence?” And he’d ask the nominee: “If you had to pick one energy program to eliminate, what would it be?”

Related:

A make-or-break week on guns

As Congress resumes, Obama's legacy hangs in the balance

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 9, 2013 4:16 AM EDT

Hurricane Sandy last year pushed the issue of climate change higher on the nation’s agenda. President Barack Obama indicated in his inaugural address and his State of the Union address that climate policy would be a priority for his second term. Some members of Congress said Sandy might cause Congress to redesign infrastructure spending to limit damage from future catastrophic storms.

A series of Senate votes Friday indicated what the political balance now is on energy policy and on measures to avert climate change.

These were non-binding votes on a budget resolution that’s almost surely not going to be passed by both chambers of Congress.

But they show where senators stand, with a third of them up for election next year and presumably focused on the political impacts of their policy choices. Damaging campaign ads could be produced from a vote on any amendment that put a senator at odds with public opinion in his or her state.

One interpretation of the votes: a bipartisan majority of senators do not want to impose a fee or tax on carbon dioxide emissions – but also do not want to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Yet a majority also wants to increase the supply of energy even if that energy would come from Canadian oil sands that generate more greenhouse gas emission than other grades of oil.

Taken together the votes seem to be further evidence that in the near term the EPA, not Congress, will be the primary venue for the legal and policy battles over climate change. Obama’s nominee to head the EPA will have her confirmation hearing next month before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., speak to the media during a news conference January 24, 2013 on Capitol Hill.

On the carbon fee or tax, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., proposed “the establishment of a fee on carbon pollution,” with the provision that all revenue from such a fee would be “returned to the American people in the form of Federal deficit reduction, reduced Federal tax rates, cost savings, or other direct benefits.”

“We ignore carbon pollution at our peril, and we have subsidized it long enough,” Whitehouse said before the vote on his amendment. “It is past time to wake up from our sleepwalking. This vote is a test. Whether we pass or fail is a measure of us.”

By a vote of 58 to 41, Whitehouse’s fee was defeated. No Republican senators voted for it and 13 Democratic senators – including six Democrats up for re-election next year – voted against it.

In a separate vote the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., that would have made it more difficult in the future to enact a carbon tax or fee, by establishing what’s called a “a budget point of order” against such a tax.

Blunt got 53 votes; he needed 60. Six Democrats, including three up for re-election in 2014 -- Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas -- voted for Blunt’s amendment.

Franz Matzner, associate director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said the vote on the Whitehouse and Blunt amendments indicated that senators were “not ready to take it (a carbon tax) off the table and say that we going to make it so that in the future no (carbon tax) legislation can be considered because it will violate the terms of the budget.”

The Senate also voted, 62 to 37, to support the building of the Keystone XL pipeline project which would connect oil sands production facilities in Alberta, Canada with refineries in the United States.

Seventeen Democratic senators – including eight Democrats up for re-election next year – voted for an amendment proposed by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., expressing support for building the pipeline.

The decision right now rests in the hands of the Obama administration. Under an executive order dating back to 1968, the secretary of state decides on whether to permit a pipeline, such as Keystone XL, that connects the United States with a foreign country.

Hoeven said approving the pipeline is matter of “getting our economy going and growing, and… making sure we don’t have to import oil from the Middle East. It is not just oil from Canada, it is oil from the great State of North Dakota and Montana — light, sweet crude we need to get to our refineries.”

But Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the Senate must first grapple with questions such as whether the increased use of oil sands from Canada will lead to higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

A Congressional Research Service report last week said that Canadian oil sands crudes “are on average somewhat more GHG emission intensive than the crudes they may displace in U.S. refineries,” up to 20 percent higher than for the average transportation fuel.

Boxer offered an amendment – in contrast with Hoeven’s -- that she said would ensure important issues would be addressed, “such as how much oil will stay here versus how much will be exported and, therefore, will we suffer from higher energy prices? How much steel will be made in America?” She added that, “Our American national security experts warn us against the instability worldwide caused by climate disruption.” Boxer’s amendment was defeated, 58 to 41.

In another big environmental vote, the Senate, 52 to 47, defeated an amended by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R- Okla. that in Inhofe’s own words “stops the EPA from having the jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon” and would have defunded the agency’s greenhouse gas regulations.

On this vote, only three Democrats, Pryor, Landrieu, and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted for Inhofe’s amendment. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is up for re-election in 2014, was the only Republican senator voting against Inhofe’s amendment.

“The good news is that majority of the Senate clearly acknowledges that climate change is a reality that has to be addressed and they didn’t want to tie the hands of Congress or the administration to find ways to address carbon pollution,” Matzner said.

Gerald Herbert / AP

Gas prices are displayed at a gas station and mini-mart in the Mid City section of New Orleans. Pump prices have fallen quickly in the past several days, giving Mitt Romney one less thing to slam President Barack Obama with in the run-up to the election.

In a week that saw President Barack Obama poll dead-even with Republican rival Mitt Romney in the race for the White House, it may have been some relief to Democrats that gas prices have shed 17 cents in the last 12 days.

While that could help boost the president's chances for another four-year term (or at least not hurt them), the drop in prices has more to do with luck than with White House energy policy.

After refinery bottlenecks sent prices surging ahead of a seasonal switch from summer to winter gasoline blends, those kinks have been cleared and gasoline has begun flowing smoothly again.

The global oil markets, meanwhile, are awash in oil thanks to a global economic slowdown that has cut into demand. And while tighter sanctions on Iran have crimped that country’s oil exports, any shortfall has been more than made up by rising U.S. production set in motion by forces in place before Obama took office.

For all the spirited debate about the success or failure of the White House's energy policies, presidents have little control over the market forces that drive gas prices higher or lower.

“(Obama) gets blamed for high gasoline high prices -- which he has nothing to do with -- and he takes credit for higher production -- which he has nothing to do with,” said John Kingston, director of news at Platt’s. “So maybe it all sort of balances out.”

The timing of the pump price plunge comes as the candidates continue to pound each other over energy policy. After surging to more than $4 a gallon in many parts of the country, the national average price of a gallon of regular has fallen by 13 cents to $3.58 in the past week, according to Energy Department data.

The sharp slide is expected continue, according to AAA, pulling average pump prices down to between $3.40 and $3.50 by Election Day and $3.25 to $3.40 by Thanksgiving.

The prospect for that continued decline rests, in part, on continued stability in the price of crude oil, which has remained remarkably steady despite ongoing tensions with Iran over its nuclear program.

As the U.S. and its allies have tightened the noose on Tehran this year, the loss of oil revenues has plunged the Iranian economy into chaos. Crude oil sales generate about half of Iranian government revenues. Oil and oil products make up nearly 80 percent of its total exports, according to U.S. estimates. Oil analysts calculate that the sanctions have blocked sales of roughly 1 million barrels a day, or about a quarter of Iran’s production capacity.

The lost oil income has lopped roughly a third off the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, relative to the dollar, sparking a round of painful inflation for Iranian consumers and putting added pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear weapons development program.

Iranian: Our money is becoming more worthless every day

On Tuesday, Iran said it would halt oil exports altogether if Western sanctions tighten any further.

"We have prepared a plan to run the country without any oil revenues," Iranian oil minister Rostam Qasemi told reporters in Dubai. "If you continue to add to the sanctions we (will) cut our oil exports to the world. ... We are hopeful that this doesn't happen, because citizens will suffer. We don't want to see European and U.S. citizens suffer."

Until recently, the threat of a full cutoff of Iranian oil production would have been enough to send crude prices soaring. But with global demand slowing because of sluggish economies, the oil markets have remained surprisingly stable.

That could change if Iran ups the ante and moves to restrict oil shipments from other oil producers in the region. One long-standing worry in the oil markets is the potential crimp in supplies from military action in the Strait of Hormuz, the global pinch point bordering Iran through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil flows every day.

An Iranian blockade remains a constant threat to global oil supplies. Last month, more than 30 nations, led by the U.S. Navy, conducted naval exercises that included efforts to thwart a simulated mining of critical shipping lanes.

The results were not reassuring, according to a report by PBS Newshour.

Of the 29 simulated mines that were dropped in the water, “I don’t think a great many were found,” retired Navy Capt. Robert O’Donnell, a former mine warfare director for his service, told the NewsHour. “It was probably around half or less.”

U.S. oil refiners are getting an even bigger break on crude prices. That's thanks to a steady rise in North American production captive to a pipeline system that was designed and built before recent production surges in Canada and revived U.S. oilfields. Much of the credit goes to advances in technology that have had little to do with U.S. energy policy. But the gains have been both unexpected and dramatic.

Since 2009, shortly after Obama took office, U.S. oil output has risen by roughly 1.6 million barrels per day, ending a more than tw-decade decline in production. The glut of oil has depressed domestic prices compared to the global benchmark, providing U.S. refiners with a discount of about $20 a barrel below the global price of about $110. That lower U.S. price will continue to help keep U.S. pump prices in check.

The domestic oil boom has also helped cut unemployment in energy-producing states, adding roughly 1.7 million new jobs this year, according to IHS Global Insight’s energy research group. That number could rise to almost 3 million by 2020, the firm said in a study released Tuesday. 

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NBC News takes a deep dive into the statements made by President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in their second debate of the 2012 election cycle. 

We take a look at two topics, the auto bailout and energy production, and put their comments to the test.

Oil and gas production on federal lands
Romney claimed that both oil and natural gas production on federal land has decreased, with Obama maintaining that the Republican’s assertions are “ just not true.”

Here’s their contentious exchange:

ROMNEY: As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent each year on federal land and gas production is down 9 percent. Why?  because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal land and in federal water.
OBAMA: Here's what happened. You had a whole bunch of oil companies who had leases on public lands that they weren't using. So what we said was, you can't just sit on this for 10, 20, 30 years, decide when you want to drill, when you want to produce, when it's most profitable for you. These are public lands. So if you want to drill on public lands, you use it or you lose it.  
ROMNEY: OK –  (inaudible) –
OBAMA: And so what we did was take away – 
ROMNEY: That's –
OBAMA: –  those leases, and we are now re-letting them so that we can actually make a profit. 
ROMNEY: And  – and –  and production on private –  on government lands is down. 
OBAMA: And the production is up. No it isn't. 
ROMNEY: Production on government land of oil is down 14 percent. 
OBAMA: Governor –  
ROMNEY: And production of gas is down 9 percent.  
OBAMA: What you're saying is just not true. It's just not true.
ROMNEY: I  –  it's absolutely true. 

What’s the truth? Oil production did fall by 14 percent on federal lands - onshore and offshore -  but that was only in one year, from 2010 to 2011.

And it was mainly the result of fallout from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

But Obama is correct, that since he took office, oil production on federal lands is up.

RELATED: Sharp exchanges at second debate

In both 2009 and 2010, oil production increased ... so even with the 14 percent drop last year, overall production on federal land is still up 10.6 percent since 2008. 

But natural gas production on federal lands is down, and has been declining since 2003, according to the Energy Information Administration, mainly because of a decline in offshore natural gas drilling. 

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney participate in the second presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

Auto bailout
Obama called out Romney for not backing measures to save troubled car companies – the former Massachusetts governor opposed the federal bailout.

VOTE: Did the second presidential debate do anything to influence who you will support in the election?

"Now when Gov. Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt. I said we're going to bet on American workers and the American auto industry and it's come surging back."

The president was referring to a newspaper piece Romney wrote back in 2008, but the governor never actually said, “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

The New York Times wrote that headline, not Gov. Romney. 

Romney did say the auto companies should go through what’s called a “managed bankruptcy,” where the companies would get help from private investors but not taxpayers’ money.

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

Tuesday night’s presidential debate will feature a town hall-style format, where the two candidates will answer questions from a selected group of voters on a wide range of issues.

Instead of the two candidates sitting together at a table, or standing behind lecterns, with a moderator directing the discussion, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney will talk directly to individual voters and attempt to answer their questions and concerns.  

Participants in this format will be selected by the Gallup polling organization, their questions will be submitted to the moderator, CNN’s Candy Crowley, but asked by the individual voters themselves.

RELATED: Our original request for your questions

The two candidates, seen in this composite of file photos, are set to debate on Tuesday night. What would you ask them?

Over the weekend, we asked readers of NBCNews.com to submit the questions they would ask if given the opportunity to participate in the debate and we received over 4,800 responses.  

The questions covered a wide array of topics and concerns. Many were addressed to a single candidate -- pointed questions asking the president for specifics about the recent events in Libya, or queries directed toward Romney and comments he made about "47 percent" of Americans at a private fundraiser.

Other questions were put to both candidates -- on jobs, the economy, foreign policy, and health care.  

But outside of those, readers had questions on all kinds of issues: The debt and deficit, the environment, immigration, gun ownership, reproductive rights, the war on drugs, the tone of the political debate in Washington, religion and, yes, even one posing the now-revoked Pizza Hut challenge to ask the candidates to choose between sausage or pepperoni.

We can’t reprint all the questions in full, but we culled through the submissions to identify the major themes our readers are most interested in.

Here we've highlighted some of the more prominent areas of questioning we received, along with some actual queries, and the general positions of the candidates.

(The names and locations of our NBCNews.com participants are not included because not all the e-mail submissions included them.)

Help for middle-and lower-income Americans and the unemployed
“All I have heard about are the upper class and middle class. What about those of us who make under $100,000 per year? What are their plans for us? All I've heard is by making the rich richer the rest of us will make more, or have more jobs. That doesn't work for me.”

“Why do we hear all about the middle class but nothing about the poor people?”

“I’m seeing some hiring in our area, but mostly part time with no benefits. Businesses would rather hire two or more part-time employees than one full-time employee which would require them to provide benefits. The lack of work hours prevents these people from affording any sort of stability or standard of living. What would you do stimulate full-time hiring rather than the part-time hiring we have now?”

“How do they plan to deal with the rampant age discrimination that is going on for workers in their 40s and 50s who were displaced by the economic downturn of the past four years?”

Where the candidates stand: Last summer Obama proposed a new stimulus program which would use federal funds to prevent up to 280,000 public school teacher layoffs, pay for modernizing 35,000 public schools, and give tax credits to firms which hired long-term unemployed people.

Romney has said his program of tax simplification, increased trade with Latin America, increased energy production, and more efficient job training would create millions of jobs.

Romney has proposed to lower income tax rates, but also to curb or eliminate tax preferences and deductions so that his entire income tax overhaul would be revenue neutral.

He expects that there would be both income growth and federal revenue growth resulting from a more efficient tax system. He said in the first debate with Obama, "I will not reduce the share (of taxes) paid by high-income individuals."

Right now, people in the top 20 percent of the income distribution pay nearly 70 percent of all federal taxes and people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution pay 24 percent of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Romney also said, "I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families."

Obama has proposed to raise taxes on people earning more than $200,000 (single filers) and $250,000 (married couples filing jointly). And he has already raised taxes on them in the Affordable Care Act by imposing higher Medicare taxes.

Also, employees with high-value employer-provided health insurance ("Cadillac plans") will find that their plans will be hit with a new tax in 2018 on the value of the coverage exceeding $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for family coverage, plus a cost growth factor.

Lingering effects of the 2008 financial crisis and financial sector bailout
“My question would be: What caused the financial meltdown in 2008? Unless we know what happened, then how could we possibly prevent it from happening again? This is something that the American people deserve to know.”

“I would ask Mitt Romney, if you had been president in 2009 when the economy was collapsing, what would you have done to prevent another Great Depression, besides letting GM go bankrupt?”

“How was the repaid TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money used and how should it have been used? Did it pay down debt or go into a slush fund?”

Where the candidates stand: As a member of the Senate, Obama voted for the TARP bailout.

Romney supported the 2008 financial sector bailout, saying it “was the right action to be taken,” citing the need “to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures.”

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

Romney has supported parts the Dodd-Frank law which Congress enacted and Obama signed into law in response to the financial crisis, but Romney also said in the first debate that the Dodd-Frank law “has some unintended consequences that are harmful to the economy. One is it designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they're effectively guaranteed by the federal government. This is the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks I've ever seen.”

Inflation and the cost of living
“To both candidates, what is the average price for a gallon of milk today?”

“With the economy in a recession and the working class spending more for gasoline, groceries, and all other products, what will you do in the first 30 days to help lower prices in order for the prices of other goods to come down and would you put that statement in writing tonight and have it as public record for the American public?”

Where the candidates stand: In the first debate, Romney did raise the issue of inflation contending that the prices of gasoline food, electricity, and medical care have all increased during Obama’s presidency.

Obama has not made inflation an issue, focusing instead on improving public education, developing American energy, closing tax loopholes for companies that are locate production overseas, and “closing our deficit in a responsible, balanced way that allows us to invest in our future.”

Saving and reforming entitlement programs
“If Social Security is in trouble and needs to be saved, why don't they just remove the cap (on taxable earnings) and everyone pays into it no matter how much money they make. This is a tax on the middle class with a cap of $106,000.”

“I am now sixty-four years old and have worked since I was fifteen years old. Both my employers and I have made payments into Social Security and Medicare for all these years. I retired two years ago and an now receiving a reduced benefit because of my early retirement. How can any candidate or party make plans to do away with Social Security and Medicare, when they are not the ones paying for it? If there is going to be a shortage, increase the employee and employer contribution amounts.”

Where the candidates stand: Obama said in the first debate that “Social Security is structurally sound,” but “it's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill” in 1983. That 1983 bill included a tax increase and a reduction in future retirement benefits.

In a speech in February, Romney rejected the idea of Social Security tax increases but said “we will slowly raise the (Social Security) retirement age. We will slow the growth in benefits for higher-income retirees.”

In his fiscal year 2013 budge proposal, Obama calls for requiring higher-income retirees to pay higher premiums for Medicare doctor's visits and prescription drug coverage. He also calls for higher deductibles for Medicare outpatient care and doctor's office visits, starting in 2017, and for requiring new co-payments for Medicare home health care services starting in 2017.

He also proposed to give the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a group of independent experts, the power to limit the growth of Medicare spending to the rate of national income growth plus 0.5 percent.

Slideshow: Twin sons of different parties

From tramping through cornfields to munching ice cream cones to holding babies – the time-honored traditions of the campaign trail leave President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney looking surprisingly alike.

Launch slideshow

On Medicare, Romney proposes no change for current recipients, but starting in 2023, would people on Medicare to choose among private insurance plans and receive a federal subsidy -- scaled to income to help pay for coverage.

He has also said, "We will gradually increase the Medicare eligibility age by one month each year. In the long run, the eligibility ages for both programs (Medicare and Social Security) will be indexed to longevity so that they increase only as fast as life expectancy."

Energy
“Why nobody is talking about the high gas prices?”

“Why isn't all the petroleum product from our domestic drilling and refining kept for domestic consumption? Perhaps a new publicly owned refinery in the northern Plains states could handle the dirty oil from Canada and give us a source of refined product for all our governmental needs. Isn't this a shovel-ready project that would create good long-lasting jobs and put us further down the road of energy independence?”

Where the candidates stand: Romney has made increasing domestic energy production one of his central campaign themes, while Obama has claimed credit for increased domestic production of oil and gas during the past four years.

But the Environmental Protection Agency this year imposed new clean air rules that limit emissions from coal-fired electric power plants.

Obama said in the first debate that he and Romney “both agree that we've got to boost American energy production, and oil and natural gas production are higher than they've been in years. But I also believe that we've got to look at the energy sources of the future, like wind and solar and bio fuels, and make those investments” through federal subsidies for alternative energy firms.

Romney said he’d double the number of permits for domestic oil and gas development. He also said to Obama, “I like coal. I'm going to make sure we can continue to burn clean coal. People in the coal industry feel like it’s getting crushed by your policies.”

A Romney spokesman said in August that he would allow the wind credit to expire, “end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.”

And finally – expressing the perhaps quixotic desire of many readers for more compromise and bipartisan problem-solving in the nation’s capital, these questions:

“If you are unsuccessful in winning the election, would you consider taking a position in your opponent's administration with an eye towards helping to foster bipartisanship? If so, what ideas of your opponent would you be most enthusiastic about supporting?”

ABINGDON, VA -- Mitt Romney downplayed the importance of new, positive jobs data released Friday, telling a crowd of supporters here in rural Virginia the drop in the unemployment rate had more to do with workers dropping out of the labor force than with any real expansion of hiring.

"There were fewer new jobs created this month than last month," Romney said of today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which showed 114,000 jobs created in September, and revised the August number up to 142,000 new jobs.

Steve Helber / AP

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gestures during a rally in Abingdon, Va., Friday, Oct. 5, 2012.

The Republican presidential nominee's tack broke from a now-monthly tradition of seizing on weak employment reports to portray President Barack Obama as ineffective in turning around a struggling US economy, Mitt Romney downplayed the importance of today's more positive labor data,

"The unemployment rate as you noted this year has come down very, very slowly, but it’s come down none the less.  The reason it’s come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work," Romney continued. "If the same share of people were participating in the workforce today as on the day the president got elected, our unemployment rate would be around 11 percent. That’s the real reality of what’s happening out there."

Recommended: Obama uses positive jobs report to make case against Romney

The report from the Bureau of Labor statistics shows workforce participation remained essentially flat in September, at around 64 percent, with an uptick in workers who took part time jobs for economic reasons, such as not being able to get full time employment. Updward-revised jobs numbers from July and August also contributed to the lower jobless rate.

While workforce participation has generally declined over the course of the past four years, workforce participation actually inched upward last month – meaning a drop in those seeking work wasn’t directly attributable to the lower unemployment rate last month.

But if the jobs report itself was a secondary focus in Romney's remarks today, the economy was once again front and center, with Romney telling some 3,300 supporters gathered here that he could grow the economy faster than Obama, and promising brighter economic days ahead.

"My priority is creating jobs," Romney said. "I’ll help small business do that, with everything I can do. Now we can do better. We don’t have to stay on the path we’ve been on. We can do better."

"When I’m president of the United States – that unemployment rate is going to come down not because people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce but because we’re creating more jobs," Romney said later. "I will create jobs and get America working again!" 

The Obama campaign challenged Romney economic plans in a statement released shortly after the event concluded.

"In fact, independent economists say his plans would not create jobs, could slow the recovery, and could actually cost us two million jobs over the next two years. The American people want to move forward, not back,” Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith wrote.

HOBBS, NM -- Mitt Romney returned to oil country this morning to sell his new energy plan, setting a goal of reaching North American energy independence by 2020 in large part by removing regulatory barriers to fossil fuel development in the United States, and increasing cooperation with fellow energy-producers Canada and Mexico.

"I will set a national goal of America and North America -- North American energy independence by 2020," Romney pledged. "That means we produce all the energy we use in North America. And there are a number of things I'm going to do to make that happen. It is achievable. This is not some pie in the sky kind of thing. This is a real, achievable objective."

Evan Vucci / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign event at Watson Truck and Supply Aug. 23.

Romney's plan, laid out in a white paper and conference call with reporters last night, calls for streamlining the permit process for energy development on federal lands and offshore, for building infrastructure like the Keystone Pipeline, and supporting basic research on next-generation fuels like wind and solar, while abandoning subsidies and loan guarantees that, Romney argues, have tilted the marketplace in favor of those energy sources.

With the plan largely fleshed out before Romney's remarks, the candidate took on the role of chief salesman for his plan today, telling a crowd of a few hundred supporters here there would be ancillary benefits to boosting domestic energy production beyond lowering energy prices at home.

"Three million jobs come back to this country by taking advantage of something we have right underneath our feet, that’s oil and gas and coal, we’re going to make it happen we’re going to create those jobs," Romney said.

"Let me tell you what else it does," Romney continued "It adds $500 billion to the size of our economy. That’s more good wages, that’s an opportunity for more Americans to have a bright and prosperous future. It also means by the way tens of billions, potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of tax revenues going into states and the federal government, which can make sure we have a military second to none and schools that lead the world and care for our seniors, better roads and bridges."

Romney also argued that becoming less dependent on unstable or hostile regimes for energy increases America's national security.

"This is not just a matter of economy and jobs and rising incomes and the growing economy and more tax revenues. It’s also more security. It means we don’t have to rely on people who in some cases don’t like us very much," Romney said.

Democrats responded to Romney's remarks with a statement.

"He will embrace a backward, drilling-focused energy policy that prioritizes subsidies and tax breaks for the big oil and gas companies and leaves behind efforts to increase energy efficiency and develop homegrown alternative energy," Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith wrote in a statement to reporters. "This isn’t a recipe for energy independence; it’s just another irresponsible scheme to help line the pockets of big oil while allowing the U.S. to fall behind and cede the clean energy sector to China."

Romney's choice of venue for publicly unveiling his plan raises some questions about his campaign strategy. The presumptive GOP nominee had not previously campaigned or run television ads in New Mexico, and while the state ranks 6th in oil production, according to government assessments, it is not considered a swing state. President Obama carried the state in 2008, and NBC's current battleground map, debuted this morning, places it in squarely in the "Lean Democratic" category.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – With just one week until Mitt Romney takes the stage at the GOP convention in Tampa, his campaign rolled out the candidate's energy policy -- one that they hope illustrates stark differences with President Obama, and which excites middle class voters looking for an economic boost.

The Romney policy, spelled out in a white paper and on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, focuses on developing domestic fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal - in large part by shifting federal responsibilities to the states, and by expanding exploration and production nationwide. Romney will outline the policy in oil-rich New Mexico on Thursday.

Romney's plan would make states the custodian of energy production on federal lands within their borders and allow them to implement their own federally-approved leasing practices. Such a move would effectively shift responsibility for permitting, leasing and environmental regulation to states, with the hope of speeding energy development by cutting red tape.

Romney's plan calls for reaching North American energy independence by 2020, primarily through expansion of traditional fossil fuels. The United States is currently the world's third largest oil producer, which Romney would hope to expand. The U.S. also currently imports more than half its oil from countries in the Western Hemisphere, with Canada making up a 29-percent share. Those imports could be increased through greater cooperation and by the immediate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and similar projects.

"The challenge in getting there is not about the resources we have, it’s not about the technology we have, it’s about the government that we have," said Oren Cass, Romney's domestic policy director. "And the real question is are we going to pursue the political reforms that will allow us to develop the resources to their fullest?"

Those reforms will also include greenlighting increased offshore drilling, slowed after 2009's BP oil spill disaster, particularly off the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina where Romney's advisers argue there is already widespread support for increased offshore drilling.

"One of the things that's detailed here in the policy under the offshore section is to establish the most aggressive leasing plan ever put forward, as compared to President Obama's, which was the least aggressive ever put forward," Cass told reporters.

The GOP challenger's plan pays little attention to renewable fuels like wind and solar power, long championed by Democrats, including Obama, who has touted green jobs creation as a major part of his own economic and energy plans.

Romney's plan, in contrast, includes continued research support for alternative fuels, but would have wind and solar generation succeed or fail on their own, without government subsidies or loan guarantees, a politically unpopular position in some wind and solar producing states like Iowa and Colorado, but one Romney's advisers said they believed could be overcome by the overall economic benefits of their plan.

President Obama makes a similar argument about continued oil industry tax subsidies, arguing that the highly profitable major oil companies don't need the tax breaks, the extension of which is supported by Romney.

Romney is expected to further outline his energy plan in remarks later today in New Mexico, the sixth largest oil producing state in the country, pumping roughly 3-percent of the nation's oil on an annual basis, according to the Energy Information Administration.

OSKALOOSA, IA – President Obama seemed to reference the infamous tale of the Romney family dog riding on the roof of the presumptive GOP nominee's car for most of a road trip during an extended riff here on wind energy.

Criticizing Mitt Romney’s opposition to wind energy production tax credits, Obama also went personal, bringing up an anecdote about a Romney family vacation.

Obama mocked what he said was Romney’s wind energy policy, quoting him from a March 6 speech in Zanesville, Ohio when he said, “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”

“That’s what he said about wind power,” Obama told about 850 supporters standing outside a classic, American flag-bedecked farmhouse at the Nelson Pioneer Farm Museum here.

“Now, I don’t know if he’s actually tried that. I know he’s had other things on his car,” Obama said as the crowd applauded, understanding the reference.

Liberal critics and Democratic groups supporting the president have pounced on the Seamus story to criticize Romney's character, suggesting Romney is insensitive, but this is the first time the president himself has referenced it himself. (Obama aides have previously invoked the story.)

But after the quick Seamus allusion, the president went right back to accusing Romney of not understanding the importance of wind energy in Iowa.

“If he wants to learn something about wind, all he’s got to do is pay attention to what you’ve been doing here in Iowa,” the president said, noting that the wind industry now supports 7,000 jobs in Iowa.

And new statistics from a Department of Energy report on wind power, which the president referred to Tuesday, also reflect the importance of wind as a policy and political issue: it’s one of the top two states when it comes to in-state wind energy generation, generating 18.8 percent in 2011, second only to South Dakota.

“If [Romney] knew what you’ve been doing, he’d know that 20 percent of Iowa’s electricity now runs on wind,” Obama said to applause. “Powering our homes and our factories, and our businesses in a way that is clean and renewable.”

In a statement the Romney campaign said Obama's Seamus reference showed that the president "will do anything to distract from his abysmal record."

"After sanctimoniously complaining about making a 'big election about small things,' President Obama continues to embarrass himself and diminish his office with un-presidential behavior," campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. 

After a series of local interviews here, the president heads to campaign events in Marshalltown and Waterloo, continuing to wind his way east through the state.

Republicans have latched onto a new report about the defunct solar panel maker Solyndra, in an attempt to ding the Obama White House for embarking on a fool's errand with its green energy initiatives and engaging in cronyism when one of its biggest investments took a turn for the worse.

Solyndra has been on the tongues of conservatives -- including Mitt Romney, who staged a surprise press conference out of the company's former headquaters in May -- for months. And they feel that a new report released this week by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee only strengthens their case against the incumbent administration.

Republicans' central narrative is this: the White House anxiously approved $535 million in loan guarantees for Solyndra -- a company with a principal investor who was a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama -- as part of its green energy program. And, the GOP contends, when Solyndra started to struggle, the Department of Energy restructured its loans despite misgivings from the Office of Management and Budget.

In a series of emails obtained and published by the committee and written during the initial approval process for the loans, one OMB staff member writes of the pressure to finish its review of the Solyndra loan.

"It's based on pressure from the VP's office," another OMB staffer wrote in response. "[The Department of Energy] would like to schedule the closing for tomorrow, and [Energy Secretary Steven] Chu will be in CA and [Vice President Biden] by video link for Friday announcement."

A Democratic report issued Thursday by the minority staff of the Energy and Commerce Committee acknowledged that the White House was certainly interested in an "expeditious decision" on the loans -- but mostly because Solyndra was the first major loan guarantee of the program.

But, Democrats contend, there is no evidence that this pressure influenced the ultimate decision to offer Solyndra a guarantee. Moreover, Democrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans.

The White House said Thursday, too, that the Republican-led inquiry was about little more than politics.

"I did see these reports, and what it points out is, yet again, proof positive that none of the accusations that the Republicans have made about this particular loan have turned out to be true -- that this was a merit-based decision," White House press secretary said in a gaggle Thursday aboard Air Force One. "What we knew then we still know, and this is a 18-month, costly investigation that only highlights the fact that Congress is not doing what it should do to help the American people."

The Republican report produced no hard evidence of malfeasance in the Obama administration's management of Solyndra, but the mere appearance of impropriety has fed into a narrative about transparency and waste that the GOP has sought to advance.

"When President Obama claimed government helped build businesses, he must have been thinking about his failed attempt to prop up Solyndra," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Friday in an email to reporters. "But after half a billion in wasted taxpayer dollars and nearly 2,000 unemployed workers, it’s clear the only people who lost on President Obama’s Solyndra gamble were American taxpayers."

In particular, Republicans have highlighted a portion of the emails contained within the same GOP report detailing the cost to taxpayers if the government restructured Solyndra's loans, or rather, let the company liquidate.

An energy official wrote in early January of 2011 that the expected loss under liquidation would be $141 million versus an expected loss of $385 million under a loan restructuring.

Democrats argue, though, that the Solyndra loan wasn't imprudent in the way Republicans would make it seem, and that the process to restructure the loan was the process of usual internal administration deliberation. Besides, Democrats contend, Solyndra might not have had to file for bankruptcy if it weren't for a sudden influx onto the market of cheaper Chinese alternatives.

But Republicans aren't likely to let go of Solyndra as an issue during this campaign. The June NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans who were familiar with the company had a negative impression of it. Two percent of respondents in the June poll said they had a positive impression of Solyndra, versus 24 percent who said they had a negative opinion of the failed company. But 59 percent of respondents said in mid-June that they were unfamiliar with the company.

GOP officials also said that Solyndra tests particularly well in data they’ve collected, especially as individuals are exposed to more information about its difficulties and the government's support for the company.

The bet is that if Obama and Solyndra are tethered together in voters' minds, it will benefit Romney come election day.

"Let’s look at the results. Today, Staples employs roughly 90,000 people," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said Friday in Nevada, referencing the office supplies company that Bain Capital helped support during his time in charge.

"And Solyndra, I think you know how many people it employs," Romney added.