Would Romney tax plan hurt middle class?

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- The Democratic mayor of Newark, N.J., said Sunday the U.S. middle class has good reason to be leery of Republican Mitt Romney's tax plan.

Mayor Cory Booker said on ABC's "This Week" that Romney's proposal to close various tax loopholes and eliminate deductions were still too vague to give the middle class much assurance they would not bear the brunt of them.

"If I'm an American sitting back right now, I'd say, wait a minute, are you going to cut loopholes on carried interest and other things that are indefensible in corporate (world) and Wall Street? Or are you going to cut my home mortgage deduction? Or are you going to cut my Earned Income Tax Credit?" Booker said. "Who is going to get these tax loophole cuts?"

Booker contended the Romney campaign had boiled down to an appeal to the middle class to have faith they would not be burned by Romney after the election.

"Now they have said they're going to cut $5 trillion in taxes, increase spending in the military, and somehow not dig us into a deeper deficit budget," Booker said.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the most-productive tax cuts would come in the business sector because it would lead to job creation. "What does President Obama want to do? Raise taxes," he declared. "Take money out of the productive economy and give it to the non-productive economy."