Coming Today: Complete Coverage of the First Presidential Debate

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

- Debate Live Stream The Times will show the debate live and in its entirety at nytimes.com and on mobile apps beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

- TimesCast Politics A preview of the debate in a live video broadcast starting at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, and analysis and fact-checking immediately after the event.

- Live Blog Starting around 8:30 p.m. Eastern, Times reporters and editors will provide real-time updates and analysis.

- Q. and A. Times reporters and editors will answer readers' questions on the live blog, or on Twitter using the hashtag #asknyt.

- Fact-Checking Throughout the debate, Times reporters will take a closer look at the candidates' statements and attacks.

- Election 2012 App The latest debate news from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and live video.

- Photo Slide Shows Times photographers provide portraits of the candidates and chronicle th e event from the hall.

- Social Media Follow the action live on Facebook at facebook.com

/nytimespolitics and on Twitter at twitter.com

/thecaucus. Find more Times journalists on Twitter at nytimes.com/politics.

- Annotated Debate Check back on Thursday morning for an interactive debate video and transcript featuring reporters' annotations and illustrative graphics.

- Columns and Editorials Op-Ed columnists and editorial board members provide analysis and commentary, and dispatches on the Campaign Stops blog.

Obama\'s Wright Ties Highlighted Again

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Fox News and the conservative blogger Matt Drudge on Tuesday night trumpeted a five-year-old video of President Obama praising his controversial former pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., reviving the issue on the eve of Mr. Obama's first debate with Mitt Romney.

In the video clip from 2007, which was reported on at the time, Mr. Obama is shown delivering an impassioned speech about race and poverty during a conference for black clergy at Hampton University, an historically black college in Virginia. During the speech, he singles out Mr. Wright in the audience.

“I've got to give a special shout-out to my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He's a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country,” Mr. Obama says on June 5. “Please everybody, give an extraordinary welcome to my pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.”

The video, which was obtained in full and posted by the Daily Caller, another conservative website, also shows Mr. Obama talking about the difficulties faced by the homeless people and veterans. He says such people “may need help with basic skills-how to show up to work on time, wear the right clothes, and act appropriately in an office. We have to help them get there.”

The publication of the video was apparently an attempt to counter the recent video showing Mr. Romney characterizing “47 percent” of the American public as dependent on government.

An article on the Daily Caller website described the video as showing a “racially charged and at times angry speech” in which Mr. Obama describes “a racist, zero-sum society.”

Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, played several clips from the video in which Mr. Obama complains about the lack of help for the communities in New Orleans after the Katrina Hurricane. Mr. Hannity called the clips e vidence of the “most divisive class warfare” from Mr. Obama and said it offers “a glimpse into the mind of the real Barack Obama.”

The release of the clip showing the president praising Mr. Wright appeared to be designed to remind undecided voters of the controversial comments about race and religion that caused Mr. Obama to distance himself from his longtime pastor during the 2008 campaign.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama's campaign, said of the video:

“In a transparent attempt to change the subject from his comments attacking half of the American people, Mitt Romney's allies recirculated video of a 2007 event that was open to and extensively covered by the press at the time. The only thing shocking about this is that they apparently think it's wrong to suggest that we should help returning veterans, children leaving foster care and other members of Mitt Romney's 47 percent get training that will allow them to find the best ava ilable jobs. If the Romney campaign believes that Americans will accept these desperate attacks tomorrow night in place of specific plans for the middle class, it's they who are in for a surprise.”

It remained unclear on Tuesday night whether Mr. Romney's campaign would seize on the video as an effective tool for helping to turn around his campaign with a little more than a month to go before election day. Mr. Romney trails Mr. Obama in most key battleground states.

But unlike the recent video of Mr. Romney's critique of the “47 percent,” the clip of Mr. Obama praising Mr. Wright was previously known. And the controversy over Mr. Obama's relationship with Mr. Wright was one of the most covered of the 2008 primary.

The June 2007 speech aired by Fox was delivered nine months before some of Mr. Wright's controversial comments were made public in the middle of the 2008 primary battle between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton. Mr. Wright had said that “Americans chickens are coming home to roost” and declared “God damn America.”

In remarks in April of 2008, Mr. Obama denounced his former pastor, saying that he was “outraged” and “saddened” by Mr. Wright's statements. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright's comments were “divisive and destructive” and that they ‘end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate.”

Mr. Obama successfully weathered the controversy in 2008. But despite his denunciations of his former pastor, Mr. Obama's relationship with Mr. Wright has persisted as an issue, especially among some conservatives.

Earlier this year, a group of high-profile Republican strategists weighed a multi-million dollar campaign to use Mr. Wright as an issue against Mr. Obama. The effort was to be financed by a conservative billionaire in Chicago.

The group had suggested hiring an “extremely literate conservative African-American” to argue that Mr. Obama misled the natio n by trying to be a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.” The $10 million plan, to be financed by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade, was ditched after the New York Times reported its existence.

Republicans Seize On Biden\'s \'Middle Class\' Remark

By TRIP GABRIEL

A stray sentence by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Tuesday became the latest remark seized by the opposition and turned into a blistering line of attack against him.

After Mr. Biden described the middle class as having “been buried the last four years,'' Republicans pounced, treating it as an unwitting admission of President Obama's failures.

The vice president was criticizing the Republican ticket for pursuing a tax overhaul that would raise taxes on the middle class, he said.

“How can they justify raising taxes on the middle class that's been buried the last four years?'' Mr. Biden said at a campaign rally in Charlotte, N.C.

The Republican barrage came fast and furious by Twitter message, press release and campaign conference call. It began with a tweet from Mitt Romney's account:

Agree with @joebiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November #CantAfford4More

- Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 2, 2012

Campaigning in Iowa, Representative Paul D. Ryan reinforced the message. “Of course the middle class has been buried,'' he said. “They're being buried by regulations; they're being buried by taxes; they're being buried by borrowing. They're being buried by the Obama Administration's economic failures.”

The Romney-Ryan campaign even held an afternoon press call with one of its fiercest surrogates, John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor, to drive home the theme.

Republicans seemed to seize on the remark with special fervor, coming as it did one day before the first debate between Mr. Romney and President Obama, in which the cost of Mr. Romney's proposed tax cuts for the rich and his disparagement of 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes are sure to be topics of discussion.

In respon se, the Obama campaign called the attacks “desperate and out of context.''

“As the Vice President has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy,'' a spokeswoman, Lis Smith, said.

In his North Carolina remarks, Mr. Biden was citing, as the Democrats have has for months, an independent study that found that cutting tax rates by 20 percent and closing loopholes to avoid increasing the deficit, as Mr. Romney proposes, could only be done by raising taxes on households earning less than $200,000.

The audience booed.

“No, no â€" all kidding aside,'' Mr. Biden said. “With all the boos â€" I mean, we can stop all that malarkey. Look, guys, this is deadly earnest, man. This is deadly earnest. How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that's been buried the last four years? How in the Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?''

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan dispute the accuracy of the study, by the Tax Policy Center, and they have cited studies of their own showing their tax plan will not hit the middle class.

The maladroit sentence was the latest in a long series this year that have been yanked from context and used by the opposition, including Mr. Romney's remark that he “liked to fire people” and Mr. Obama's comment that “you didn't build that.”

Later in the day, Mr. Biden clarified his meaning. “The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported,” he told a crowd in Asheville, N.C.

Latest Obama Fund-Raising Gimmick: Their 20th Anniversary

By MICHAEL SHEAR

How does the leader of the free world celebrate 20 years of marriage?

By asking for money, of course.

President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, were married 20 years ago on Wednesday. They will celebrate with hundreds of their pals in Denver as Mr. Obama faces Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's good friend David Axelrod is circulating an anniversary card among the couple's closest friends - and millions of others.

In fact, Mr. Axelrod has a suggestion for friends who don't quite know what to get the couple for their big day.

“Let's take a moment to show Barack and Michelle that we wish them well in life, not just in politics,” Mr. Axelrod said, providing a link to enter a name (and e-mail address) at the campaign's Web site. “Add your name to the card today.”

Oh, and by the way, Mr. Axelrod adds: “More than 3 mil lion people like you power this campaign. If you can, please donate today.”

The Caucus Click: Role of a Lifetime

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Free Advice From Financial Planners in October

By ANN CARRNS

Four nonprofit groups are sponsoring a freebie that might come in handy if you're looking to get your financial life on track: financial planning sessions in two dozen cities during October.

The groups are billing the sessions as free, “no strings attached,” one-on-one meetings with financial professionals - mostly certified financial planners, but also other members of the Financial Planning Association. The planners are volunteering their time and will not distribute business cards or sell financial products or services, according to the organizers.

The groups sponsoring the third annual “Financial Planning Days” events include the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, the Financial Planning Association, the Foundation for Financial Planning and the United States Conference of Mayors.

In one-on-one meetings, the financial planners can help answer questions on budgeting, managing credit, getting o ut of debt, income taxes, homeownership, handling mortgage foreclosures, paying for college, estate planning, insurance and other topics.

Most locations will also offer free workshops on various personal finance topics, like taxes and retirement.

The events begin this week on Thursday and Friday in Miami. The next round occurs Saturday in Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; Huntington Beach, Calif.; Newark; Oakland, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; and San Diego. The events will be held in other cities later in the month; for a complete list of locations, cities and dates, see www.financialplanningdays.org.

You can register online in advance by clicking on the city where you want to attend, or by calling, toll free, 1-877-861-7826. You can also walk in and register on the day of the event, but preference is given to those who pre-register.

Participants do not have to bring anything, but organizers suggest they might want to bring relevant financial documents and a lis t of questions to make the most of their time.

TimesCast Politics: On the Eve of the Debate

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Romney Says He Would Honor Immigration Reprieves Granted by Obama

By JULIA PRESTON

Responding to pressure from Latino groups to clarify his immigration views, Mitt Romney told The Denver Post late Monday that he would not cancel temporary reprieves from deportation that President Obama is granting to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.

“The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid,” Mr. Romney said in an interview aboard his campaign bus two days before he meets Mr. Obama in a debate in Denver.

“I'm not going to take something that they've purchased,” he said. He added, “Before those visas have expired, we will have the full immigration reform plan that I've proposed.”

It was unclear what Mr. Romney meant when he called the deferrals “something that they've purchased,” but he may have been referring to the $465 application fee, which is steep f or many immigrant families. The program is financed by the fees.

As he returned to Colorado, where Latino voters could help decide who carries the battleground state, Mr. Romney had been repeatedly pressed about his approach to the Obama administration's program, which gives two-year deferrals of deportation to young undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children.

Despite repeated questions at a Sept. 19 town hall meeting in Miami broadcast by Univision, a Spanish-language network, Mr. Romney declined to say whether he would continue the program, which has been highly popular in Latino and immigrant communities. He did say he would not support any mass roundup and deportation of illegal immigrants.

In the Denver Post interview, Mr. Romney did not fill in new details about the reform plan he would propose, or say how he would steer it through Congress, where there is a partisan stalemate on the issue.

Mr. Romney's statement seemed likely to play well among Latinos in Colorado, who have been turning out by the thousands for legal counseling sessions about the deferrals. Many undocumented immigrants have said they are holding back from applying for the program until after the Nov. 6 elections, because they fear that Mr. Romney would halt it if he were elected.

Young immigrants had praise but also some skepticism. “We think it is important that Governor Romney said that people who have already received their deferred action permits will be able to keep them,” said Lorella Praeli, a leader of the United We Dream Network, a nationwide group. “However, it is still not clear whether he is intending to allow those of us who have not applied yet to continue to apply.”

Many immigration policy analysts noted a conspicuous error in Mr. Romney's choice of words, which suggested a misunderstanding about basic terms of the debate. Mr. Obama's program, which h e put in place by executive directive, does not confer any visas or legal status. The program, known as deferred action, suspends deportations only on a case-by-case basis.

“It is disturbing that he does not know the difference between a visa and deferred action,” said Margaret Stock, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who is an immigration lawyer in Alaska and a Republican. “Nobody got a visa through this program. That would have required Congressional action.”

“This is Immigration Law 101,” Ms. Stock said. “It looks like a major fumble by whoever is advising him on immigration.”

Since taking hard-line positions during the Republican nominating contests, Mr. Romney has moderated his position, saying he could support legislation to give permanent resident visas, known as green cards, to young immigrants who serve in the military. Still, polls suggest that Mr. Obama had far broader support among Latinos than Mr. Romney.

More than 1 00,000 immigrants have applied for deferrals, a number that officials say is increasing steadily. As many as 1.2 million immigrants could be immediately eligible.

Fallout Over Voter Efforts

October 2, 2012, 12:44 pm

By ROBBIE BROWN

Republican Party leaders in four more states have fired a consulting firm that was hired to register new voters, after suspect forms linked to the company were discovered in Florida.

State party officials in Florida fired the company, Strategic Allied Consulting, last week. Party leaders in Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia will also no longer use the company, said Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Ten Florida counties have discovered more than 100 suspicious voter registration forms related to get-out-the-vote efforts by the company. No questionable forms tied to the company's work have been found in any other states, Ms. Kukowski said.

The comp any, which was paid $3 million by the Republican Party and hired 4,000 contract employees to register voters in the five states, denied wrongdoing, calling the accusations libelous.

“Strategic Allied Consulting has never tolerated even minimal violations of election law when registering voters,” the firm said in a statement.

It said the company was proud of its record of registering Republicans, Democrats and independent voters and would “continue to address any suspicions of problematic voter registrations quickly and without fail.”

The company, which is based in Tempe, Ariz., is owned by Nathan Sproul, who has been involved in voter registration efforts since at least the 2004 presidential election. Mr. Sproul was once the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party.

Fixing a Credit-Card Snafu for Stay-at-Home Spouses

October 2, 2012, 12:11 pm

By ANN CARRNS

More than a year ago, I wrote a Bucks post about a provision of the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which was created to protect consumers but also ended up restricting access to credit for stay-at-home wives and husbands.

Now, the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau plans to propose a new rule to fix that defect, and allow credit card issuers to consider household income on applications from non-working spouses, according to testimony by bureau head Richard Cordray before a Congressional committee last month.

The law was passed in part to prevent students and young adults from getting into trouble with credit card debt, but it ended up backfiring in its impact on spouses who don't work outside the home.  In finalizing the law's details after it was enacted, the Federal Reserve had said that credit card companies must consider “individual” income, not “household” income, on credit applications. That meant that in most situations, a non-working spouse couldn't obtain credit based on their husband's or wife's income, as they could previously. (There were no specific allowances for same-sex couples, and I've reached out to various parties to get clarification on where they stand now and where they would stand once the Bureau intervenes.)

The Fed, in a somewhat outdated view of who stays home with the children these days, had said it believed “married women who do not work outside the home” would still have access to credit because they could apply for joint accounts with their husbands, or become authorized users on their husband's accounts. The move was necessary, the Fed said, to make sure the person holding the card can actually pay the bill.

But some con sumers-including one who started an online petitionâ€"vehemently disagreed. So did members of Congress, who asked Mr. Cordray to fix the problem.

Mr. Cordray, in testimony before the house committee, said his agency had determined over the summer that the restriction of credit to stay-at-home spouses was “clearly an unintended consequence” of the CARD Act and was creating a significant problem that must be addressed. He said his agency would propose a fix sometime this month.

Do you think considering household income for non-working spouses who apply for credit makes sense?

Fixing a Credit-Card Snafu for Stay-at-Home Spouses

October 2, 2012, 12:11 pm

By ANN CARRNS

More than a year ago, I wrote a Bucks post about a provision of the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which was created to protect consumers but also ended up restricting access to credit for stay-at-home wives and husbands.

Now, the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau plans to propose a new rule to fix that defect, and allow credit card issuers to consider household income on applications from non-working spouses, according to testimony by bureau head Richard Cordray before a Congressional committee last month.

The law was passed in part to prevent students and young adults from getting into trouble with credit card debt, but it ended up backfiring in its impact on spouses who don't work outside the home.  In finalizing the law's details after it was enacted, the Federal Reserve had said that credit card companies must consider “individual” income, not “household” income, on credit applications. That meant that in most situations, a non-working spouse couldn't obtain credit based on their husband's or wife's income, as they could previously. (There were no specific allowances for same-sex couples, and I've reached out to various parties to get clarification on where they stand now and where they would stand once the Bureau intervenes.)

The Fed, in a somewhat outdated view of who stays home with the children these days, had said it believed “married women who do not work outside the home” would still have access to credit because they could apply for joint accounts with their husbands, or become authorized users on their husband's accounts. The move was necessary, the Fed said, to make sure the person holding the card can actually pay the bill.

But some con sumers-including one who started an online petitionâ€"vehemently disagreed. So did members of Congress, who asked Mr. Cordray to fix the problem.

Mr. Cordray, in testimony before the house committee, said his agency had determined over the summer that the restriction of credit to stay-at-home spouses was “clearly an unintended consequence” of the CARD Act and was creating a significant problem that must be addressed. He said his agency would propose a fix sometime this month.

Do you think considering household income for non-working spouses who apply for credit makes sense?

Tuesday Reading: When Doctors Stop Taking Insurance

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Tuesday Reading: When Doctors Stop Taking Insurance

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Romney Ad Has New Take on Whether Obama Raised Taxes

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Mitt Romney seems to have changed his mind about whether President Obama has already raised taxes.

At an event last month with Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Romney asserted â€" oddly, for him - that Mr. Obama had not increased taxes during his first term.

“I admit this,” Mr. Romney said. “He has one thing he did not do in his first four years, he's said he's going to do in his next four years, which is to raise taxes.”

But in a new television ad, Mr. Romney says exactly the opposite. The ad, titled “Already Has,” asks the question: “Who will raise taxes on the middle class?” An announcer provides the answer.

“Barack Obama and the liberals already have,” she says as the ad shows a picture of the president hugging Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former Democratic House speaker.

The ad asserts that Americans will pay higher taxes and higher pri ces for medicine because of Mr. Obama's health care overhaul. And it goes on to say that Democrats want to raise taxes by an additional $1 trillion, including on the middle class.

Mr. Romney's campaign appears to be basing the claim of higher health care taxes on the idea that the individual mandate included in the overhaul is a tax. The Supreme Court found the mandate constitutional by saying it was authorized as part of the government's taxing authority - a decision that Mr. Romney said at the time he disagreed with.

The ad - which Mr. Romney says at the end he approves - is the first to use the Republican campaign's new slogan. It concludes: “We can't afford four more years.” It was not immediately clear where the ad was running.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that he lowered taxes on the middle class during his tenure, pointing to the payroll tax cut and other reductions as evidence of his commitment to keeping taxes low for most Americans.

In an interview on “60 Minutes” on CBS last month, Mr. Obama said that the accusations from Mr. Romney and his Republican allies amounted to “a lot of rhetoric, but there aren't a lot of facts supporting it. Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes. I've cut taxes for middle-class families by an average of $3,600 for a typical family.”

Fact-check organizations have said Mr. Obama's assertion is “mostly true.”

Democrats are pushing to eliminate decade-long tax cuts for the wealthy, which Republicans oppose.

From the Magazine: The Mitt Romney Who Might Have Been

Collage by Chrissie Abbott.

It was almost exactly four years ago that watched up close as John McCain agonized over how he should respond to America's spiraling financial crisis. What McCain ultimately chose to do, six weeks before the election, was to suspend his campaign and return to Washington to meet with President Bush and Congressional leaders. But that strategic gamble - which now takes its place in the annals of political misfires - came as a result of a somber meeting earlier that day with his economic team at a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The attendees included several of the candidate's big donors in the finance industry, a few political advisers and Romney.

“It was an unrelentingly bleak discussion, with the financial guys talking about the world as we know it ending,” recalls Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was McCain's senior economic adviser at the time. Another McCain senior staff member, who, like many people I spoke with, would speak only under the condition of anonymity, told me: “At the time, there wasn't a person on the political team who understood what a credit-default swap was or toxic mortgages or subprime bundling. At one point I asked, ‘What do you mean by economic collapse?' And one of them answered, ‘It means you won't be able to get a 20-dollar bill out of an A.T.M.' Right after the meeting I called my wife and said, ‘Get $30,000 in cash out of the bank today.' It was terrifying and surreal.”

Romney had been an informal adviser, fund-raiser and campaign surrogate for McCain since dropping out of the G.O.P. race seven months earlier. Well before the meltdown of the markets that summer, the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital C.E.O. had emphasized his vast experience in the private sector. As he told one campaign audience in Sarasota, Fla., in January 2008: “I will not need briefings on how the economy works. I know how it works. I've been there.”

That day in the Hilton conference room, however, Romney did not distinguish himself as McCain struggled to decide what course he should recommend in Washington. Holtz-Eakin recalls “nothing specifically” that Romney had to offer. The other McCain senior staff member is more emphatic: “The reality is he didn't take command. He wasn't a Marshall-type figure who conveyed an understanding of both business and politics. But the truth is, no one else had any clue what to do, either.” Then he added, “There wasn't a single person in the room, including Romney, who had any specific policy recommendation.”

Four years later, Mitt Romney's unsteady campaign performance has yet to convince voters that he is a “Marshall-type figure” who can, in his own distinct way, fill the office of the presidency. Only recently has Romney begun to detail the policies he would pursue if elected, as if they were hatched from a few late-night strategy sessions after a string of bad news days rather than from the candidate's core philosophy. The fact that Romney is in charge of his own widely criticized campaign doesn't appear to be especially reassuring to the electorate - and even so, his campaign tactics reveal only what he would do in order to win, not what he'll do once he has won.

Romney faces an incumbent with his own leadership issues, though Obama has the benefit of surrogates who are deft at ascribing fittingly presidential characteristics to him. One morning in June, I sat in the Chicago mayor's office of Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, watching as he emptied a grab bag of leadership adjectives: “competitive,” “disciplined,” “resolute.” Emanuel then bolted out of his chair, saying, “This'll give you a sense of his mind.” He led me into a hallway where the walls were festooned with images from the Oval Office. Pointing, the mayor said: “This is literally his first day as president, 9:30 in the morning. There's nothing on his desk, obviously - first day. This,” he then gestured to another framed photograph, “is me coming back after I'm mayor-elect, sometime in early 2011. You see anything on that desk?”

The Early Word: Offshore

By JADA F. SMITH

Today's Times

• Mitt Romney's tax returns show that offshore arrangements made through his former company, Bain Capital, used tax-avoidance strategies that have enhanced his income, Michael Luo and Mike McIntire report. Other offshore arrangements also enabled his individual retirement account to avoid taxes and may have reduced his personal income tax bills.

• After Mr. Romney called for the repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act, which expanded the government's whistle-blower program in the financial services industry, President Obama's re-election campaign has received generous donations from lawyers who have reaped multimillion-dollar rewards from taking on the cases of those who have stepped forward to point out wrongdoing, Eric Lipton reports.

• A ballot measure in California would prohibit both corporations and labor unions from donating to candidates, but the corporate provision is far less str ingent than the one aimed at unions, Adam Nagourney reports. Labor leaders see the measure as the biggest threat they have faced in a year of nationwide challenges to diminish their power.

• Looking ahead to the post-election session of Congress, Senate leaders are working on a framework for a comprehensive long-term approach to reducing the deficit rather than a short-term solution, Jonathan Weisman reports. While such an agreement would avert a series of automatic tax increases and deep spending cuts, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate remain far apart on the details of how the process would work, while House Republicans continue to resist any discussion of tax increases.

• Mr. Romney's campaign seems to be shifting course, choosing not to focus solely on the nation's economic struggles and instead drawing a sharper distinction between his platform and the president's, Michael D. Shear and Ashley Parker report.

• Moderating a presidential debate, a role that once stood as a crowning and coveted journalistic achievement, is now subject to partisan rancor in a hyperpoliticized climate, Jeremy W. Peters writes. Moderators have been deemed fair game for criticism before they have asked even a single question.