(Bloomberg News) Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will call today for the elimination of taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for middle-income taxpayers as he outlines a plan that he says will include 59 specific steps to boost the U.S. economy and create jobs.

Romney, seeking to highlight the business experience he says sets him apart from other Republican presidential candidates, will speak in North Las Vegas, Nevada, two days before President Barack Obama is scheduled to present his own job-revival proposals to a joint session of Congress.

Romney, 64, said his ideas include "10 concrete actions" he would take on his first day in the White House.

"Each proposal is rooted in the conservative premise that government itself cannot create jobs," he wrote in an opinion article published today in USA Today. "At best, government can provide a framework in which economic growth can occur."

The differences between his proposals and actions taken by the president "could not be starker," Romney wrote, criticizing Obama for having "threatened" to raise taxes on individuals and businesses.

"Marginal income tax rates and tax rates on savings and investment must be kept low," he wrote. "Taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for middle-income taxpayers should be eliminated."

Romney said he would "pare back" regulations and require federal agencies to offset any new rules by eliminating existing ones of equivalent cost.

Choice For Nation

As he pledged to push more trade deals and boost U.S. energy exploration, Romney said that the nation is at a fork in the road.

"In one direction lies the heavy hand of the state," he wrote. "In the other direction lies limited government, free enterprise and economic growth."

Romney talks more on the campaign trail about his business career than his 2003-2007 tenure as governor, when Massachusetts was among the nation's worst for job creation.

"As the governor of Massachusetts, the state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation and was the third worst in the country for manufacturing jobs," Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse said in a statement today. "In the private sector, Romney benefited by laying people off and shipping jobs overseas. That sort of track record is not going to sit well with the Americans who are looking to find a job with a good wage and decent health care."

Business Career

Romney, who enjoyed front-runner status in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination before Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the contest on Aug. 13, is increasingly pointing to his past role as the head of private equity firm Bain Capital LLC.

The Boston-based firm found profits for Romney, its other executives and its investors, whether the companies they touched boomed, eliminated employees or filed for bankruptcy.

Romney, who spent most of his career at Bain, has assets worth between $190 million and $240 million, according to his financial disclosures.

"I have spent most of my career in the private sector starting new businesses and turning around ailing ones," Romney wrote. "Unlike career politicians who have never met a payroll, I know why jobs come and go."

Obama, 50, may be politically vulnerable amid 9.1 percent unemployment and approval ratings near lows of his presidency.

Election-Day Unemployment Rate

Since World War II, no U.S. president has won re-election with a jobless rate above 6 percent, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, who faced 7.2 percent unemployment on Election Day in 1984 after the rate had dropped more than three percentage points during the previous two years. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg puts the rate at 8.6 percent in the third quarter of next year, just prior to the election.

Nevada's unemployment rate was 12.9 percent in July, the highest among the states. Obama won the state in the 2008 election.

Perry, 61, is campaigning on his record of job creation in a booming Texas economy and is ahead of Romney in national polls of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. When asked about Romney's private-sector experience, the Texas governor has pointed to his work helping run a family farm in his home state after he left the Air Force and before entering government.

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., 51, who has struggled to gain ground in Republican polls, presented a jobs plan last week that called for lower individual and corporate tax rates, as well as the elimination of taxes on capital gains and dividends and the alternate minimum tax.