Mnuchin: Our Objective Is Not Tax Cuts for the Wealthy; It’s Middle Income Tax Cuts

CHUCK TODD: So does anybody pay more?

SECY. STEVE MNUCHIN: Again, we'll go through the details. As we have them, we'll have full transparency. But the president has been very clear. And I've been clear from the beginning. Our objective is not to create tax cuts for the wealthy. Our objective is about creating middle income tax cuts.

But as you know, one of the things we're trying to do is eliminate lots and lots of deductions. One of those deductions is about getting the federal government out of the business of subsidizing the states. So this will have different impacts to people in different states. And we're sensitive to that.

CHUCK TODD: So the goal is-- you know, there's a lot of this tax plan, and it came through in the health care plan, too. It seems as if, at the end of the day, red states benefit, blue states get punished. Is this issue on the state taxes, not being able to write them off anymore, is this a way to just target the wealthy in blue states?

SECY. STEVE MNUCHIN: Not at all. That's absolutely not fair and not the case. And what I would say about tax reform is it hasn't been done in 30 years. We're focused on changing the system. The system's broken. And most Americans understand that the system's broken. They're not happy with the difficulty of filling out tax forms. It's gotten harder and harder.

And under our plan, 95 percent of Americans can fill out their taxes on a giant postcard. I mean think about the beauty of that in that what the money it saves, the money it saves at the I.R.S., and the simplicity of it.