Romney gives details on potential policies

WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- Republican U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has started fleshing out some of the policies he would pursue if elected.

Speaking to a crowd of private donors in Florida Sunday, the former Massachusetts governor outlined his plans to eliminate or consolidate federal agencies, win back Latino voters and reform the nation's tax code, should he take the GOP nomination as expected and go on to defeat Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the general election in November, NBC reported.

"I'm going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I'm probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go," Romney said. "Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I'm not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we've got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states."

When speaking about his tax proposal, which has been criticized by Democrats as favoring the wealthy, Romney identified specific loopholes and deductions for the wealthy that he would eliminate.

"I'm going to probably eliminate for high-income people the second home mortgage deduction," Romney said, adding he would also likely cut deductions for state income and property taxes.

"By virtue of doing that, we'll get the same tax revenue, but we'll have lower rates," Romney said. "The nice thing about lower rates is that small businesses not get to keep a larger share of what they're earning and plow it back in to hire more people and expand their business."

Romney also told his audience, "We have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party," suggesting a "Republican DREAM Act," which would offer illegal immigrants a limited path to citizenship.