DETROIT — Last September, Mitt Romney rolled out a detailed, long-in-the-works economic plan. The 59-point, 160-page document called for cutting corporate tax rates, reducing capital gains rates for some taxpayers, eliminating the death tax, reducing regulation, reaching new free-trade agreements, imposing sanctions on China, and other measures. What it did not call for was cutting individual income tax rates. In fact, in Romney’s list of “59 Policy Proposals That Will Get America Back To Work,” the number-one proposal was to “maintain current tax rates on personal income.”

But in Romney’s speech here in Detroit Friday, Romney, in a tough race with Rick Santorum for the frontrunner’s position in the Republican primary contest, called for “an across-the-board 20 percent reduction in marginal individual income tax rates.”  Romney added: “By reducing the tax on the next dollar of income earned by all taxpayers, we will encourage hard work, risk-taking, and productivity by allowing Americans to keep more of what they earn.”