Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney said he'll re­duce the num­ber of de­duc­tions and ex­emp­tions for high-in­come tax­pay­ers, while de­clin­ing to say which ones he would get rid of as part of his plan. Rom­ney said he wants to re­duce tax rates while main­tain­ing the rev­enue col­lect­ed by the gov­ern­ment. The goal, he said, is to not low­er tax­es on high in­come earn­ers while cut­ting them for mid­dle in­come earn­ers by do­ing away with the tax­es they would pay on in­ter­est, div­i­dends and cap­i­tal gains. "Peo­ple at the high end, high in­come tax­pay­ers, are go­ing to have few­er de­duc­tions and ex­emp­tions. Those num­bers are go­ing to come down. Oth­er­wise they'd get a tax break," Rom­ney said on NBC's Meet the Press to­day. "I want to make sure peo­ple un­der­stand, de­spite what the De­moc­rats said at their con­ven­tion, I am not re­duc­ing tax­es on high in­come tax­pay­ers."

He said he wouldn't raise tax­es on mid­dle-in­come earn­ers to re­duce the na­tion's deficit. "My tax pol­i­cy is de­signed to find a way to en­cour­age more hir­ing in this coun­try," Rom­ney said. "We en­cour­age small busi­ness, be­cause small busi­ness is able to keep more of what it makes and there­fore hire more peo­ple, which is my pri­or­i­ty." In an in­ter­view aired to­day on ABC's This Week, Rom­ney's run­ning mate, Wis­con­sin Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan, al­so wouldn't say which de­duc­tions and ex­emp­tions for high-in­come earn­ers he and Rom­ney would seek to elim­i­nate. A Rom­ney ad­min­is­tra­tion would in­sist on a pub­lic de­bate over deficit re­duc­tion and would nev­er "cut some back-room deal" to over­haul the tax code and re­duce spend­ing, Ryan said. "We want to have this de­bate with Con­gress, and we want to do this with the con­sent of the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple and fig­ure out what loop­holes should stay or go and who should or should not get them," he said.

Lan­hee Chen, Rom­ney's do­mes­tic pol­i­cy ad­vis­er, said Rom­ney doesn't want to cut home­own­er­ship and health­care tax breaks, es­pe­cial­ly for mid­dle-in­come peo­ple. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma said in a por­tion of an in­ter­view aired to­day on CBS's Face the Na­tion that he is "more than hap­py to work with the Re­pub­li­cans" to make the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment "lean­er and more ef­fi­cient," so long as a greater tax bur­den is shift­ed to the wealthy. "You can't re­duce the deficit un­less you take a bal­anced ap­proach that says, 'We've got­ta make gov­ern­ment lean­er and more ef­fi­cient,' but we've al­so got to ask peo­ple like me or Gov­er­nor Rom­ney who have done bet­ter than any­body else over the course of the last decade and whose tax­es are just about low­er than they've been in the last 50 years to do a lit­tle bit more," Oba­ma said. (Bloomberg)