WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama says the current corporate tax system is outdated, unfair and inefficient. He is calling for an end to dozens of subsidies and loopholes that he says offer tax breaks to companies that move jobs and profits overseas. Obama says the current system is "not right and it needs to change." The Obama administration is proposing cutting corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 28 percent. That is still higher than the 25 percent rate sought by congressional Republicans. Obama said in a statement Wednesday that his framework lowers the corporate tax rate and broadens the tax base and will increase competitiveness for companies across the U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday the current business tax system is bad for business and for job-creation and argued that President Barack Obama's plan to reduce corporate tax rates to 28 percent would make the tax system more globally competitive. The Obama administration is proposing to lower the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent, the highest in the world after Japan. Manufacturers would receive incentives so that their effective tax rate could be even lower. Corporations with overseas operations would also face an unspecified minimum tax on their foreign earnings. The proposal outlined by Geithner would also eliminate tax loopholes and subsidies that Geithner called "fundamentally unfair." Obama also would set a minimum tax on the foreign earning of U.S. companies. "We want to restore a system in which American businesses succeed or fail based on the products they make and the services they provide, not on the creativity of their tax engineers or the lobbyists they hire," Geithner said. Geithner acknowledged that the debate "will be politically contentious." "Some will say these proposals are too tough on business, and others will say that they're not tough enough," he said. Obama's plan would be part of a larger effort to overhaul the U.S. tax system and it dovetails with Obama's call for raising taxes on millionaires and maintaining current rates on individuals making $200,000 or less. While the 35 percent nominal corporate tax rate ranks among the highest, deductions, credits and exemptions allow many corporations to pay taxes at a much lower rate. Reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent would reduce tax revenues by about $700 billion over the next decade, according to an estimate prepared in October by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper for Congress. That means lawmakers would have to find about $70 billion a year in tax increases to keep the package from adding to the budget deficit, hardly an easy task. In 2010, the corporate income tax raised a total of $278 billion, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Geithner said the Obama plan aims to help U.S. businesses, especially manufacturers who face strong international competition. Obama's plan would lower the effective rate for manufacturers to 25 percent by offering other tax incentives that emphasize development of clean energy systems. Associated Press writers Martin Crutsinger and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.