After a several-week hiatus, there's another Republican presidential debate on tonight. There's a lot of ground for the Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the remaining candidates to cover, so we're going to be holding them accountable as they distort their records and make baseless attacks against the President.

Tune into the debate on CNN and stop by our debate HQ page beginning at 8 p.m. ET for live fact checks and the Democratic response.

Another day, another example of Romney and his campaign saying whatever it takes to get elected. On a conference call about Romney's latest economic proposal, an adviser said that Romney would "reconsider" closing the carried interest tax loophole. You might not have heard of this particular loophole, but you can be sure Romney knows it well: It's the one that allows him and the very wealthiest American to pay a very low tax rate. Because much of his income comes from capital gains, Romney directly benefits from the loophole in question. His tax rate is an astonishingly low 13.9 percent—much lower than many middle-class families and even lower than many millionaires. So why would he want to do away with it?

Romney himself has been clear that he doesn't want to close the loophole. He told Larry Kudlow on CNBC at the end of last month that "my view is that we don't raise taxes on anyone. I'm not looking to single out some group of people and say let's raise taxes." When Kudlow asked, "So you'd keep the carried interest?" Romney didn't hedge: "Yes."

Tomorrow night, Arizona will host the latest Republican presidential debate. With just a week till the state's primary, voters are getting to know Mitt Romney and the cast of characters who want to be the GOP nominee. They're quickly coming to discover, as Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz put it today, that "Romney is simply wrong on every issue that is important to Arizonans."

That's because Romney wants to revert to the failed economic policies of the past that wreaked havoc on our economy and would once again stack the deck against working and middle-class families. He and fellow candidate Rick Santorum have proposed budget plans that would explode the deficit by trillions of dollars and force deep cuts to programs that matter to the middle class—programs like Medicare and Social Security.

And in a state with a large Latino population like Arizona, the choice couldn't be more fundamental on issues that matter to Hispanic Americans: In an attempt to garner favor with the Tea Party, Romney and the Republicans are campaigning on slashing funding for education, Medicare, and Social Security. They oppose the DREAM Act and a path to citizenship for immigrants.

Romney's far-right position immigration stands out to Rep. Xavier Becerra, who calls him "the most extreme presidential nominee of our time."

"There’s a saying in Spanish that sums up Romney’s problem with Latinos. It goes, 'Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.' It means, 'Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are.' Well, the Latino community has seen who Romney’s friends are. And that’s all we need to see to know exactly who he is.

"Romney proudly announced the endorsement of Kris Kobach, the godfather of the Alabama and Arizona anti-immigrant laws. Then he flaunted the endorsement of none other than California’s Pete Wilson, whose extreme views on immigration put him well outside the mainstream of everyday Arizonans.

"That’s not how a friend of the Latino community behaves."

Mitt Romney: Disastrous for the middle class, disastrous for Latinos, and disastrous for Arizona.

Over the course of his 2012 campaign, President Obama's been hosting the occasional dinner for a few lucky supporters, giving him a chance to share a meal and ideas with the folks who are building the campaign on the ground. Today, he sent out an email announcing that there's another Dinner with Barack coming up, and you could be one of his guests. It's easy to put your name on the list, but hurry—the first guest will be invited tomorrow.

Here's what the President had to say:

Tomorrow night, we'll pick the first of four supporters who will sit down with me for dinner. I'm hoping you'll take me up on the invitation.

Donate $3 or whatever you can today to be automatically entered for the chance to be my first dinner guest.

These meals are one simple thing that sets this campaign apart. The seats at our table don't belong to any Washington lobbyist or powerful interest. These seats are yours.

Donate $3 or more today and be automatically entered to win.

Hope to see you,

Barack

1. Santorum's tax plan benefits the wealthy while exploding the national deficit. Just like the other Republican presidential candidates, Santorum is proposing a tax plan that benefits millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the middle class and our deficit. His plan would give the top 0.1 percent an average tax cut of $1.3 million—and add $900 billion to the deficit in 2015. Even the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute's senior fellow Kevin Hassett acknowledged, "It is just not a defensible plan."

2. Just yesterday, Santorum attacked the very idea of public education. In a speech to the Ohio Christian Alliance, Santorum argued that public support for education is an "anachronism" and a remnant of the Industrial Revolution, "when people came off the farms where they did home school or had a little neighborhood school, and into these big factories…called public schools."

3. Santorum thinks the Ryan plan doesn't go far enough. Tea Party Rep. Paul Ryan has proposed an extreme budget plan that would end Medicare as we know it and force seniors to pay twice as much for their health care. And yet Santorum doesn't think the plan is extreme enough, saying, "I support in principle what Paul Ryan is suggesting. The only concern I have is I don't think Paul Ryan goes far enough."

4. He opposes the payroll tax cut. President Obama has fought for a payroll tax cut for the middle class that would put an average of $1,500 back into workers' paychecks. Like his fellow candidate Mitt Romney, who called the payroll tax cut a "temporary little Band-Aid," Santorum says he would not vote to extend the payroll tax cut for another year. So if you're keeping score, middle-class tax cuts: bad. Tax cuts for the wealthy that explode the deficit: good.

5. Santorum opposed rescuing the auto industry. If it had been up to Santorum, "we should not have had the auto bailout." Yet without government assistance, the Big Three automakers would have been liquidated—and resulted in a massive loss of good American manufacturing jobs. President Obama's decision to lend Detroit a hand saved 1.4 million jobs, and helped this industry make a profit for the first time in decades.

On this day three years ago, with an economy in free fall, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Vice President Biden was at President Obama's side as the new administration steered the bill through Congress and a wave of Republican opposition, enacted it, and watched the difference it made for communities, small businesses, and middle-class families nationwide.

Because of this law, the tide turned, and a second Great Depression was averted. We have now seen 23 consecutive months of job growth, and the private-sector has added nearly 3.7 million jobs. Our manufacturing sector is growing for the first time since 1997. And 7 million Americans were kept out of poverty in 2010, thanks to Recovery Act tax cuts for 95 percent of working families.

Today, the Vice President has an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times, with an eloquent reflection of what the Recovery Act has meant for our economy and for our country. It's worth reading in full.

"Three years ago today, in his first major act in office, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It stirred a great debate. Some called it too big; others warned it was too meager. With just a handful of exceptions, Republicans maligned it as the absolute wrong approach to creating jobs. Today, that argument is settled. The Recovery Act did what we asked of it. Three million jobs were created or saved. Essential investments in keeping teachers on the job, building a domestic clean energy industry, and repairing our roads and bridges have helped to foster the economic growth that we are now starting to see. The president is building an economy meant to last, and the Recovery Act is part of the foundation. …

"The Recovery Act was meant to give the economy the jolt it desperately needed. Three years later, it is clear that jolt got us pretty far down the road. We have a long way to go as we work to reinvigorate manufacturing and ultimately rebuild the middle class. The president and I will not stop—will not rest—until the millions of Americans who have struggled in recent years can look their children in the eye and say, 'Honey, it's gonna be okay.'"

Mitt Romney would have voters believe he's utterly opposed to government spending. Share this infographic, and help get the word out about how Romney's Olympic success cost the American taxpayers $1.3 billion.

One of the main things Mitt Romney and his campaign want you to know is that Romney "saved" the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. In fact, Romney's returning to Utah tomorrow to congratulate himself on the 10th anniversary of those winter games.

But the story of Romney's supposed Olympic triumph isn't as simple as he wants you to believe. Rather, his success as president of the 2002 winter games was due to the unprecedented amount of federal money he procured to organize the most expensive Olympics in American history. And coming from a candidate who's spent his campaign railing against federal spending and earmarks, it's another breathtaking example of Romney's hypocrisy.

The Salt Lake games got more taxpayer dollars than all of the previous U.S.-hosted Olympics combined: a whopping $1.3 billion. For comparison, the 1984 games in L.A. received $75 million and the 1996 games in Atlanta received $609 million. It's clear that the real hero of the 2002 games was the American taxpayer.

Romney's campaign is already pushing back by saying that the extra money was necessary for security. But our money went to much more than security, including $30 million for parking lots, $2 million for sewer systems, and $33,000 for an Olympic horse adoption program.

To folks like John McCain—one of Romney's 2012 endorsers—this "ripoff of the taxpayers" for "an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City" was "outrageous" and "a national disgrace." Romney, however, bragged about the amount of funding he got from Uncle Sam.

But now that's he's in a tough Republican presidential primary, Romney says he's against that kind of spending: "Republicans spent too much money, borrowed too much money, earmarked too much. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have to be held accountable."

It's time that Romney is held accountable, too, for using $1.3 billion of the American taxpayers' money to take credit for "saving" the Olympics.