The proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget which President Barack Obama unveiled Wednesday would raise taxes for some Americans, not all of them upper-income earners, while awarding tax breaks to particular groups and interests such as college students, people who don’t save for retirement, and investors in low-income neighborhoods.

What’s most notable in the Obama plan is that despite much talk from the Simpson-Bowles commission and from other reformers of simplifying the tax code, Obama would, if Congress passed his plan, still be very much in the business of using the tax code to try to fine-tune the economy and engineer certain policy outcomes.

This targeted tax break approach seems exactly opposed to the tax reform effort that the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees are planning later this year.

Under his plan – which covers the next 10 years – tax revenues would be nearly $1 trillion higher than the baseline current-law forecast by the Congressional Budget Office. Much of that additional revenue would come from tax increases he is proposing.

The president seeks to increase taxes by far more than the $600 billion tax increase in the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) of 2012 which he signed into law on Jan 2.

He would get the $580 billion by reducing certain tax preferences for upper-income earners. He would limit the value of itemized deductions to 28 percent for families in the highest tax brackets – an idea he offered in his very first budget proposal back in 2009.

Among the other tax increases Obama proposes:

• A new “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” imposed on large banks and financial institutions, a kind of retroactive charge five years after the 2008 bailout of the financial sector. The fee is intended “to fully compensate taxpayers for the support they provided to the financial sector during the 2008–2009 economic crisis and to discourage excessive risk-taking” in the future, the president’s budget document says. If enacted, this targeted financial sector tax would raise nearly $60 billion, budget officials say.
• An increase in the estate and gift tax of nearly $72 billion. This was an issue Congress thought it had settled when it passed ATRA at the end of 2012.
• $78 billion in increased taxes on cigarettes and tobacco products.
• $44 billion in tax increases on oil, natural gas and coal producers by eliminating certain tax breaks for those industries.
• $10.7 billion from indexing all tax penalties to the inflation rate.
• $9.3 billion from limiting the amount of money that higher-income people could put in tax-sheltered retirement accounts.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

A staff member prepares the release and distribution of President Barack Obama's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget at the Government Printing Office in Washington April 10, 2013.

Many of these tax increases can be seen as part of an ongoing project by the president to shift more of the burden of paying for government and especially entitlement programs to upper-income Americans, both retirees and the currently employed.

In the same vein, the president again offered certain Medicare ideas he'd included in his budget plan last year: $68 billion in higher premiums, co-payments and surcharges for mostly higher-income Medicare recipients.

He’d get another $120 billion or so in revenue by tweaking the inflation indexing formula used to set the levels for the tax brackets, the standard deduction, and other provisions in tax law.

But on the other hand Obama also proposes an array of new tax breaks.

For example, he seeks:

• A 10 percent tax credit for small businesses that hire new employees or increase wages. This would cost $25.7 billion in lost revenue.
• Creation of tax-preferred "Promise Zones” in high-poverty communities which would provide tax breaks for hiring workers and investing within the zones, an idea somewhat reminiscent of former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp's Urban Enterprise Zones. This would cost $5.3 billion in lost revenue.
• A new tax-preferred bond program called America Fast Forward Bonds, at a cost of $10 billion, for public school construction.
• A new tax credit to encourage employers to offer retirement savings plans and to automatically enroll workers in them. Cost: $17.6 billion.

Obama’s proposal also makes some assumptions about future spending that might not turn out to be realistic: for example, it forecasts nearly $1.8 trillion in savings from overseas military operations that it assumes will not take place during the next 10 years.

The Obama blueprint isn’t likely to be adopted, but some of its specific proposals might be, if the president can use his persuasive power to bring Republican members of Congress to accept at least some of his new tax increases.

The initial response from GOP leaders was at best tepid.

“The document headed our way does not appear designed to bridge the differences between the House- and Senate-passed budgets. That’s the role Americans would expect the president to play at this stage,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Updated at 2:42 p.m. ET: In the Budget Control Act of 2011, President Barack Obama and Congress created a fail-safe device intended to spur agreement on a “grand bargain” of spending reductions and tax increases. The law, enacted as part of an escape from a potential debt limit crisis, created the famous “super committee” of 12 members of Congress which was assigned the job of devising entitlement and tax reforms which would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over ten years.

But the law included a default option: if the committee failed in its mission, then automatic spending cuts, called “the sequester,” would begin.

Neither Obama nor most congressional Republicans were happy with the prospect of automatic spending cuts, but once the president put his signature on the bill, those cuts were built into the law. Congress, of course, was free at any point to enact a new law to undo the cuts, but so far it hasn’t done so. Now that the cuts are less than a month from beginning, Obama is again warning of their effects.

Related: Budget battle resumes

In his statement Tuesday he called them “massive automatic cuts” and “deep, indiscriminate cuts to things like education and training, energy and national security” which he said “will cost us jobs, and it will slow down our recovery.” A few minutes later for emphasis he repeated the phrase “indiscriminate cuts.”

On Saturday Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Cater, in a speech at an international security conference in Munich, called the imminent cuts “huge and reckless” and said they would cause “devastating damage to the military.”

Nowhere in Obama’s statement Tuesday did he mention the exact dollar amount or percentage amount of the cuts that are slated to begin on March 1.

So how big are they? And are they “indiscriminate?"

To answer the second question first: in one sense, the cuts are not indiscriminate.

The Budget Control Act does in fact discriminate between entitlement programs, such as Social Security, in which benefit payments are automatically made to those people eligible for them, and what are called discretionary programs, such as the spending on the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Aviation Administration, or the National Park Service, which receive annual appropriations that can go up or down each year depending on the decisions of Congress.

For the most part, the cuts in the BCA exempt the entitlement programs: Grandma’s Social Security check is exempt, as is Uncle Pete’s veterans benefits check, but spending on NIH cancer research and on Zion National Park in Utah, for instance, is not.

As the Bipartisan Policy Center explained in a report last year, “The specified exemptions include Social Security, federal (including military) retirement programs, veterans benefits, Medicaid, and a host of other programs (mostly those benefitting individuals with low incomes). Furthermore, while Medicare would be subject to the sequester in the form of provider payment cuts, those cuts could not exceed two percent.”

But in another sense the cuts are indiscriminate in that they do not eliminate specific redundant or inefficient programs. The cuts are across-the-board to every federal department.

Recommended: GOP embraces cosmetic makeover, tweaking tone not principles

Alex Wong / Getty Images

President Barack Obama makes a statement during a press conference at the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House February 5, 2013 in Washington, DC.

How big will the cuts be in the current fiscal year?

Keep in mind that the current fiscal year, FY2013, began on Oct. 1 so Obama administration officials will have to implement 12 months’ worth of cuts in only seven months.

The Congressional Budget Office said in its annual budget forecast Tuesday that the automatic cuts will reduce spending by $85 billion in FY2013.

Even with the cuts taking effect, total federal spending will still be more than $3.5 trillion, a higher total than in FY2012. At 22.2 percent of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year, federal spending is high by the standards of the past 50 years. The 50-year spending average is 21 percent of GDP.

At the end of the Clinton presidency, a time which many people see as one of prosperity and when in fact there was a budget surplus, federal outlays amounted to only 18.2 percent of GDP. That’s partly because the economy was thriving, so the federal share of it was smaller than it would have been otherwise. When the economy is sluggish as it is today, federal spending – much of it automatic cash transfers in the form of entitlement spending – is relatively larger than it would be if the economy were flourishing.

The automatic cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act will reduce defense spending (other than spending for military personnel) by about 8 percent and non-defense discretionary spending by between 5 percent and 6 percent in FY2013, the CBO said Tuesday.

Members of Congress in both parties – especially those with military bases in their states or districts – have voiced alarm about the effect of the defense cuts. At last week’s confirmation hearing for Obama’s defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C. told Hagel, “Stopping sequestration from occurring is very important to me. North Carolina -- we have seven military institutions -- installations, and we have over a hundred thousand active-duty service members in my state.”

The BCA cuts, she said, “are going to harm our national security, will impair our readiness, will defer necessary maintenance that will help keep our troops safe and delay important investments in research and procurement as well as stunt our economic recovery at this time.”

Hagan was one of 74 senators voting for the BCA in 2011.

At a press conference at the Capitol Wednesday at which Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees offered a proposal to avert spending cuts by means of cuts in federal civilian employee head count, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C. said, “We have our fingerprints as Republicans on this proposal, on this sequestration idea. It was the president’s idea, according to Bob Woodward’s book, but we as the Republican Party agreed to it. We got into this mess together and we’re going to have to get out together….. To the president: we bear responsibility as Republicans for allowing this to happen. Lead us to a better solution.”

Graham was one of the 26 senators who voted against the BCA in 2011.

President Barack Obama signaled during his first debate with his Republican opponent Mitt Romney on Oct. 3  that he was willing to consider a change in Social Security benefits.

He said, “It's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill” in their 1983 deal that raised Social Security taxes and pushed up the eligibility age for collecting full retirement benefits from 65 to 67.

Now Obama has put forward his “tweak”: changing the formula used to increase Social Security benefits every year – a switch that would result in retirees getting a smaller increase in benefits than they would get under the current cost of living formula.

The average Social Security benefit for a retired worker is about $1,230 a month.

Beneficiaries will get a 1.7 percent increase in benefits, or a cost of living adjustment (COLA), in January to compensate them for the effects of rising prices. Beneficiaries got a 3.6 percent increase in 2012 but got no increase in 2011.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Protesters rally in Florida against cutting Medicare/Social Security benefits.

The Social Security benefit increases are pegged to the consumer price index for urban wage earners, a measure called CPI-W, which is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If prices drop, Social Security benefits do not get reduced.

Obama proposes to change to a different measure called “chained CPI” which attempts to reflect how consumers adjust their mix of purchases as the prices of different items change: for example, if the price of spaghetti was surging while the price of men’s shirts was unchanged, you might decide to buy somewhat less spaghetti and more shirts. You won’t stop buying spaghetti entirely and spend every last dollar on shirts, but you will adjust your consumer mix.

Jason Fichtner, the former chief economist of the Social Security Administration who now teaches at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, said the COLA which took effect in 2009 was a 5.8 percent increase using the current formula. If the chained CPI measure had been used, the increase would have been 5.2 percent.

On average, the difference between the current COLA and a COLA using chained CPI would be about three-tenths of a percentage point per year: so if under the current formula, beneficiaries would get a 1.5 percent increase in a given year, they’d get a 1.2 percent increase under a chained CPI formula.

“In times of high inflation, beneficiaries will still get a large increase; it just won’t be as much,” Fichtner said. “Everyone is still going to get a benefit increase -- both a nominal increase and a real increase to keep up their purchasing power.”

He added, “Depending on the measure of inflation you use, you can make the argument that we have been giving people a higher adjustment than is warranted, based on inflation and the change of consumer behavior to adjust to price. What this (chained CPI) does is just bring it back to a more realistic or accurate measure.”

Because there are so many Americans who collect Social Security benefits (56 million), because the number of recipients keeps growing by about 3 percent a year, and because Social Security is the single biggest spending item in the federal budget (more than one-fifth of all federal outlays), even a modest change – or “tweak” as Obama would say – would result in a significant reduction in spending.

Last year the Congressional Budget Office estimated that switching to the chained CPI formula for Social Security recipients would cut spending by $112 billion over 10 years (2012-2021).

If this switch in the COLA formula were applied to retired federal workers and to military retirees and their dependents it would save an additional $24 billion over ten years.

Obama’s proposed change would not be a cut in actual dollar terms in Social Security benefits – it would not mean a recipient who had been getting $1,230 a month would now get $1,150 a month. But some Social Security proponents still contend it will cause some hardship for some people. A calculation last year by the National Academy of Social Insurance found that a COLA that is 0.3 percentage points lower each year would result in a monthly benefit that was about 8.4 percent lower (than it would be under the current formula) by the time a retiree reached age 92.

In an analysis last year the CBO said, “An argument against reducing the COLA is that the prices faced by Social Security beneficiaries could rise faster than prices faced by the population at large. For example, beneficiaries are likely to spend more than younger people do for medical care, the price of which generally outpaces the prices of many other goods and services.”

In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Tuesday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “the details of this are not all ironed out, but they all mitigate for helping the poorest and neediest in our society, whether they are SSI (Supplemental Security Income) recipients, whether they’re 80 and older or whether the truly needy in between.”

She said some statements by Democratic House members opposing Obama’s chained CPI proposal were not indicating total opposition, but opposition only if the final accord to be signed by the president did not provide exemptions for certain categories of the kind Pelosi mentioned.

But Eric Kingson, co-chairman of a group called Social Security Works and a professor at Syracuse University who served as an advisor to the 1982-83 Greenspan commission on Social Security Reform, said. “It’s a terrible idea. You can dress it up any way you want. It’s a benefit cut and it violates the promise that Leader Pelosi made, the president made, and almost every politician – Democrats and Republicans -- made that they would not cut Social Security benefits.”

He said the purpose of the COLA is to ensure that benefits maintain their purchasing power throughout your lifetime. He said for a beneficiary who retires at age 65 and reaches age 95, he or she will have lost $18,000 in benefits compared to what he’d get under the current system.

Kingson said he worked as a “very active volunteer” for Obama’s re-election and respects him, but “this is going to get an awful lot of people very upset…. It fosters a lot cynicism if we now move to cutting Social Security.” He said the Obama White House “probably doesn’t understand how critical this system is to regular Americans.”

Updated 5:35pm ET Even as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner struggle to find a way to avoid income tax increases in the New Year on almost all households, a separate set of tax increases which Obama signed into law as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) will begin to affect workers, investors and employers on Jan. 1.

Even if Boehner and Obama reach a deal on the “fiscal cliff,” $24.6 billion in 2013 Obamacare tax increases must take effect on Jan. 1 in order for the carefully designed health care overhaul to function in budget terms as its supporters promised it would: not adding anything to future budget deficits, but, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reducing cumulative deficits by $132 billion between 2010 and 2019.

The Obamacare tax increases which begin on New Year’s Day are:

• A 2.3 percent tax on manufacturers and importers of medical devices.
• A limit on the tax deductibility of medical expenses for people who pay some of their medical costs out of pocket.
• A limit on tax-sheltered health flexible spending accounts.
• An increase in the Medicare payroll tax on single earners making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000.

The delicate balance of tax increases and spending increases in Obamacare will work only if Congress allows the tax increases to take effect, so they can offset the cost of substantial new insurance subsidies and other Obamacare outlays.

But some Senate Democrats are trying to delay at least for one year the tax on medical device manufacturers, which will raise nearly $2 billion in new revenue in 2013 and $20 billion over the next seven years.

In a letter Monday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C. and others asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to work to postpone the medical device tax.

Both Klobuchar and Hagan voted for the ACA and Minnesota is home to one of the biggest medical device makers, Medtronic.

A delay in the tax could be part of the year-end fiscal package. “My guess that it would be part of bigger deal before the end of the year,” Klobuchar told NBC News Tuesday.

The Democrats calling for delay are emphasizing the need for medical device industry jobs.

“We’re focused on this because there’s a number of small start-up companies (which would be affected by the tax),” Klobuchar said.  The medical device tax was set to raise $40 billion over 10 years “and then reduced in half without real negotiation about how it would affect jobs and the industry. So this one, above all to me, cries out for a change.”

She said the IRS regulation spelling out exactly how the tax will be collected and enforced was issued last week toward the end of the year “without giving them (the medical device firms) time to figure out how to comply. So we’re simply at this point looking for a delay and if we can make some changes to reduce or repeal it, that would be the goal,” Klobuchar said.

Hagan said, “There’s so much innovation in this field right now and they do create so many good jobs in our country that we have the risk of losing these jobs to Ireland and to many other countries. And that’s the problem,” said Hagan, who is up for re-election in 2014.

When she added that the tax would have “an adverse effect on jobs throughout our country,” she was asked whether the tax – after the one-year delay that she and Klobuchar are requesting – would have an equally adverse effect on jobs in 2014. “We can certainly look at that over time,” she said. 

J.C. Scott, senior executive vice president of government affairs for the Advanced Medical Technology Association said, "We appreciate Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Hagan's leadership on this issue and also appreciate the broad bipartisan support for preventing the implementation of the device tax which is slated to go into effect Jan. 1. Delay of the tax is an important step, but Congress must fully address the device tax as it works to develop a long-term solution to help our economy move forward, reduce our debt and reform our tax code."

The industry group said that the U.S. medical technology industry supports nearly 2 million jobs and that nearly 43,000 jobs might be at risk if the tax takes effect.

But a Senate Finance Committee aide told NBC News Tuesday, "Medical device companies are expected to enjoy trillions of dollars in growing sales over the next decade, with profit margins that would make Warren Buffett blush. Health reform is providing the medical device industry with 30 million new customers and Medicare is the industry's largest paying customer. Particularly at a time when we're all working to cut our debt, there's no need to single out any industry for a special carve out."

If the call from Democrats such as Klobuchar for delay and “reduce or repeal” reflects a weakening of support for Obamacare’s revenue raisers, that could be worrisome for both deficit reduction and cost reduction since both of those were goals of Obama’s health care overhaul.

Even as they voted for the health care overhaul in 2010, some congressional Democrats said they thought that another one of the tax increases in the law, the tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health insurance plans would never fully take effect because Congress would water it down or repeal it before 2018 when it is set to effect.

Hannah Foslien / AP

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D Minn., speaks at an election night event at the Crowne Plaza on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012 in St. Paul, Minn.

If Democrats delay, reduce or repeal the medical device tax, then the ACA will not cut costs as much as its proponents and the CBO predicted it would.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois made exactly that point in comments to reporters Tuesday: “I’ve met with medical manufacturers in my state. And I think many of them are going to face some serious hardships when it comes to their competitive edge and research. But I’ve also told them quite frankly, ‘We’ve got to make up the revenue. If we’re going to walk away from any part of this revenue, we have to find another source.’”

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?”

When Vice President Joe Biden faces off against Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, viewers might expect to see something like a reprise of silver-haired Sen. Lloyd Bentsen meeting (and by most accounts, conquering) GOP veep candidate Sen. Dan Quayle, 25 years his junior, in their 1988 debate.

Or they might expect another older vs. younger confrontation like the 2004 debate when a somber, intimidating Vice President Dick Cheney bested Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards, 12 years his junior.

Like those past encounters, there will be a stark age contrast between the two candidates in Thursday’s debate.

Nati Harnik / AP

Vice President Joe Biden speaks in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012.

Biden, who will celebrate his 70th birthday next month, had his first big debate back in 1972 – he was then 29 years old – against Republican Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, who had been a fixture in Delaware politics for a quarter of a century. Ryan was two years old in 1972 when Biden defeated Boggs and launched his national political career.

Slideshow: Biden on the campaign trail

But despite the nearly 28-year gap between Biden and Ryan, the two are similar in important ways. Both are politicians who earned their electoral success at an early age and then settled themselves into long careers on Capitol Hill. Biden was elected to the Senate at age 29 and Ryan was elected to the House at 28.

Recommended: Obama says he was 'too polite' toward Romney in first debate

While Ryan has the reputation of being the consummate PowerPoint-loving policy nerd, Biden also enjoys regaling voters and reporters with details of the 1994 crime bill and his idea of federal money to help local government hire police or detailing the diplomatic parleys he’s engaged in with foreign leaders.

 When he ran for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Biden told voters at Iowa campaign stops about his work to speed development of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, the Marine vehicle able to withstand improvised explosive devices.

While often regarded as more of a voluble campaigner and backslapper than a scholar, when given a brief and a mission, Biden works to master it, as he did as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he helped defeat Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

Staff / Reuters

Vice President Joe Biden speaking in Charlotte, North Carolina September 6, 2012, and Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, speaking in Tampa, Florida, August 29, 2012, are shown in this combination photo.

 “Biden’s performance was remarkable not only as a combination of thoughtful questioning and self-restraint,” said Boston Globe reporter Ethan Bronner in his book about the Bork battle. Biden’s performance was also remarkable because his 1988 presidential bid was collapsing at the very moment the Bork hearings were taking place. (Biden was driven from the race because he’d lifted phrases from a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock.)

Biden’s command of the Bork battle illustrates a recurring phenomenon in his career: his penchant for gaffes and odd quips often makes people underestimate him.

Despite some similarities between Biden and Ryan, in one basic sense they’re opposites: Biden has spent his career working to expand the scope and reach of federal government – as he did with the 1994 crime bill. But Ryan has dedicated most of his congressional career to attempts to put limits to federal power and spending especially on the entitlement programs that Democrats such as Biden created and expanded.

First Thoughts: The pressure is on

Biden’s forte is putting a human face on those very same entitlement programs. Campaigning in Iowa in September, Biden said, referring to the Medicare redesign proposed by Ryan and Romney, “They're going to give your mom a voucher, a coupon, that's worth a certain amount of money … and they're going to say, 'Ma, go out into the insurance market and get the best deal you can get.'” The Romney-Ryan Medicare overhaul would apply only to people born in 1958 and later.

Biden seems more of a natural than Ryan at delivering clever attack lines, as in 2007 when he called former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani “probably the most unqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency.”

Slideshow: On the campaign trail with Ryan 

But going back nearly 30 years, Biden’s friends have long known that his impulsive speaking sometimes put him in jeopardy. In 1986, when Biden was edging toward running for the Democratic presidential nomination, William Cohen, a Biden pal and then a Republican senator from Maine, told The National Journal, “Still inside of him is that boyish quality of wanting to say exactly what he wants to say. There's a lot of devil in Joe."

That remains true today – see for example the famous “this is a big f---ing deal” comment he made to President Barack Obama at the signing of the Affordable Care Act.

Since 2009 Biden has had to be the loyal lieutenant who must subordinate his ego and restrain his penchant for shoot-from-the-hip remarks.

''In the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man,'' Mr. Biden said in 2011. ''But now whatever I say is attributed to the administration. I finally learned that.''

Obama aides were reported to be unhappy last May when Biden get ahead of the president on same-sex marriage, telling NBC’s David Gregory, “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one other, are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.”  The president gave his personal support to same-sex marriages just days after Biden’s comments. 

In 2009, Obama assigned Biden the task of overseeing spending in the $830 billion stimulus and called on him to be his envoy and fact-finder on Afghanistan.

“The first thing the president asked me to do after we got elected, before we got sworn in, he said, Joe, I want you to go to Afghanistan, give me an independent assessment of what you think we should do, come back and report,” Biden told CNN’s Larry King in 2010, adding “I used to be Chairman of (the Senate) Foreign Relations (Committee).”

Biden emphasized that “I've known President Karzai for a long, long time.”

Since January 2009, Biden has held meetings with over 120 foreign leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and Chinese President Hu Jintao. In addition, he has had over 100 phone calls with more than 50 foreign leaders.

And at home, Biden has served as Obama’s envoy to labor unions -- one of the Democrat’s crucial constituencies.

Campaigning in Ohio last year, Biden told a labor audience that in the face of legislation proposed by GOP governors to curb public employees right to collective bargaining, "You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates," Biden said.

Biden has emphasized that one of his important roles since becoming vice president has been to serve as the final sounding board and counselor when Obama makes the fateful military and foreign policy decisions.

“I get to be the last guy to be with the president,” Biden told NBC’s David Gregory last May. Even though Biden opposed the raid to get Osama bin Laden, he said he told Obama, “Follow your instincts, Mr. President. Your instincts have been close to unerring.”

On Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention, speakers cherry-picked employment numbers to make President Barack Obama's record on jobs look better than it is and misrepresented Republican proposals on Medicare to cast them in the worst light.

A look at some of the claims from the stage, in speeches preceding former President Bill Clinton's featured address Wednesday night, and how those assertions compare with the facts:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, House Democratic leader: "Democrats will preserve and strengthen Medicare. Republicans will end the Medicare guarantee."

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: "Paul Ryan wrote the budget that turns Medicare into voucher care and could charge seniors $6,400 more every year, while funding tax breaks for millionaires. Here's their economic plan: if you're a millionaire, you win the lottery. If you're a senior, you lose your Medicare guarantee."

The fact: Both are on shaky ground in declaring that Republicans will end the "Medicare guarantee," and Israel's figure for how much more seniors could pay is outdated. It's actually based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the 2011 version of Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal, different in several important ways from the Republican vice presidential candidate's latest 2012 version.

The latest Ryan plan would offer future retirees the choice of a government program modeled on Medicare or private plans subsidized by government. That's not a proposal to end a Medicare guarantee. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office does, though, estimate future retirees would get less from the government under the Ryan plan than if current law continues.  Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has endorsed Ryan's Medicare ideas in broad terms while saying the White House agenda will be his own, not his running mate's, if they win.

Ryan's plan only affects people joining the program in 2023 or later. It's expected that private health insurance plans serving seniors would have to guarantee some basic level of benefits, yet to be spelled out. Finally, there's no such thing as a "guaranteed" Medicare benefit for the ages, because Congress can change the laws.

__—

Pelosi: "Under President Obama, we've gone from losing 800,000 jobs a month to adding 4.5 million private sector jobs over the last 29 months."

Steve Westly, former California state controller and chief financial officer: "President Obama understands that future. He knows that this election is about creating jobs today. That's why he's helped create 4.5 million of them, growing the economy from the middle out, not the top down."

The facts: While that figure has become a White House talking point, it's only part of the story. It's a selective number that refers just to private sector jobs created in the last 29 months, from the trough of the recession through July. Governments — especially state and local ones — have continued shedding jobs. And the claim ignores job losses during Obama's term before the employment picture bottomed out.

The economy lost 8.8 million jobs from the time employment peaked in January 2008 until it hit bottom in February 2010. Between then and this July — the most recent month for which there are figures — just 4 million jobs have been recovered. Never since World War II has the economy been so slow to recover all the jobs lost in a downturn.

__—

Pedro Pierlusi, non-voting member of the House from Puerto Rico: "The president is a champion of comprehensive immigration reform and is preventing the deportation of thousands of young men and women who were brought here as kids, have played by the rules and have done nothing wrong. Indeed, they are doing everything right by getting an education or serving in the military. But if Mitt Romney gets into office, he has vowed to overturn that action and veto the Dream Act if it ever passes Congress."

The facts: During the Republican primaries, Romney did pledge to veto the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for many young illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children. But Romney has not said what he would do with Obama's deferred action policy, which allows many young illegal immigrants to avoid deportation for two years and get a work permit. Romney has only said that he would work to create a "civil but resolute" long-term fix to illegal immigration.

__—

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America: "When Mitt Romney says he'll get rid of Planned Parenthood, and turn the clock back on a century of progress, it has real consequences for the 3 million patients who depended on Planned Parenthood last year. "

The facts: Romney has proposed to eliminate federal money for Planned Parenthood but not get rid of the organization. Planned Parenthood's budget is roughly $1.1 billion, and it receives about $75 million in federal financing, which cannot be used to pay for abortions.

__—

Pelosi: "Democrats passed health reform to allow Americans the freedom to pursue their passion; to make health care a right, not a privilege."

The facts: Access to health insurance is essentially becoming a right under Obama's health care law, although one that most people will pay for, and that right comes with a mandate to obtain coverage. Those who don't will be penalized. It is true that insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to people who have been sick or charge them exorbitant rates, once the law takes full effect. 

Winslow Townson / AP

President Barack Obama shakes hands with supporters during a campaign stop in Windham, N.H., Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)

Jim Cole / AP

President Barack Obama waves as he leaves a campaign stop Saturday, in Rochester, N.H.

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- On the same day Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan defended his Medicare plan in front of a crowd of senior citizens in Florida, President Barack Obama blasted the GOP ticket for proposing to raise costs for the elderly while slashing taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

"Their plan makes seniors pay more so that they can give another tax cut to rich folks who don't need a tax cut," the president said of Republicans on Saturday in front of a crowd of more than 3,500 supporters here.

Since Ryan was tapped as Mitt Romney's running mate Aug. 10, Medicare has become one of the most contentious issues of the election because of the controversial Ryan budget that proposed dramatic changes to the government program.

Obama blasted Republicans for wanting to turn Medicare into a voucher system.

"Meanwhile Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan want to give seniors a voucher to buy insurance on their own," the president said, citing an analysis that found the plan could cost seniors $6,400 extra each year.

"How many people think that's a good deal?  That doesn’t strengthen Medicare, it undoes the very guarantee of Medicare," he said.  "But that's the core of the plan written by Congressman Ryan and endorsed by Gov. Romney."

The president's remarks in New Hampshire were largely a response to earlier attacks from the presumptive GOP nominee in his first installment of what will become a weekly podcast.

"I think it’s outrageous that the president took $716 billion out of the Medicare trust fund to pay for Obamacare," Romney said.

And shortly after the podcast was released, Romney quickly got some backup from his newest teammate.  Ryan was joined by his 78-year-old mother at a rally in The Villages, Fla., the world's largest senior citizens community. “Here is what the president won’t tell you about his Medicare plan—about Obamacare," Ryan told the crowd. "The president raids $716 billion from the Medicare program to pay for the Obamacare program.”

And while the president was on the defensive regarding Medicare, he also continued to focus attention on tax rates. Throughout his stops in New Hampshire, he asserted that under Ryan's budget, Romney would pay less than 1 percent in taxes. 

"That's a pretty good deal, just paying 1 precent in taxes -- you're making millions of dollars. Here's the kicker, they expect you to pick up the tab," he told the crowd here.

This week Obama campaign manager Jim Messina sent a letter to his counterpart in the Romney campaign, stating Democrats would drop their calls for the former Massachusetts governor to release more tax returns if he made the past five years public.  Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades quickly responded, calling the letter another attempt for the Obama campaign to distract from a failed economic record.

The Romney campaign was again quick to respond to the president's attacks Saturday, calling them false and another way for the campaign to avoid talking about the president's record. Romney spokesman Ryan Williams blasted out a response: "Following news that 44 out of 50 states saw their unemployment rates rise, it is not surprising the president is launching yet another false attack."

The Granite State will have more action to look forward to on Monday, when Romney and Ryan will appear together in Manchester for a town hall.

THE VILLAGES, Fla. -- Campaigning with his retired mother at his side, Congressman Paul Ryan made the Romney-Ryan ticket pitch for fixing Medicare Saturday morning before thousands at the world's largest senior citizens community.

“Like a lot of Americans, when I think about Medicare it's not just a program, it's not just a bunch of numbers, it's what my mom relies on, it's what my grandma had,” Ryan said in his most detailed campaign speech yet. “Medicare was there for our family, for my grandma, when we needed it then; and Medicare is there for my mom while she needs it now, and we have to keep that guarantee.”

In a very personal appeal to the crowd that started with Ryan walking hand-and-hand with his 78-year-old mother, Betty Douglas, he promised to make sure “bureaucrats will not mess with my mom’s healthcare or your mom’s healthcare.”

The presumptive GOP vice presidential nominee also assured the crowd at The Villages the Romney-Ryan plan will not affect those already in retirement.

“Our solution to preserve, protect, and save Medicare does not affect your benefits. Let me repeat that. Our plan does not affect the benefits for people who are in or near retirement. It’s a promise that was made and it’s a promise that must be kept,” he said, with a large “protect & strengthen Medicare” sign behind him. “To save it for this generation, you have to reform it for my generation so it doesn’t go bankrupt when we retire.”

The Chairman of the House Budget Committee, speaking in the state with the highest concentration of voters over 65 in the country, had harsh words for President Barack Obama, as well.

“Here is what the president won’t tell you about his Medicare plan—about Obamacare. The president raids $716 billion from the Medicare program to pay for the Obamacare program,” Ryan told the crowd in the battleground state that went for Obama in the 2008 election. “Medicare should not be used as a piggy bank for Obamacare. Medicare should be used to be the promise that it made to our current seniors. Period. End of Story.”

Saturday’s rally marks Ryan’s first visit to Florida since being tapped as Mitt Romney’s VP exactly a week ago. The presumptive GOP VP’s plan to overhaul Medicare has been the focus of both Democrats' and the Obama campaign's attacks since he was selected.

Several thousand retirees turned out in one of The Villages’ town squares not only to hear the seven-term Wisconsin congressman speak but were also able to enjoy the sounds of Lee Greenwood, who sang “Proud to be an American” on stage just before Ryan and his mom walked up.

While Ryan focused on outlining the Medicare plan under a Romney administration in Florida, Mitt Romney was holding six private fundraisers in New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.