I am going to address this to the American people, whether they be conservatives or liberals or something in between. Back in April, the Washington Post reported that Mitt Romney had turned over twenty-three years of tax returns to John McCain’s vice-presidential team. It’s easy to do the math here. If you subtract twenty-three from 2008, you get 1985. Mitt Romney created Bain Capital in 1984, and 1985 was the first tax return that reflected his new job. It’s obvious that Romney turned over every record that pertained to Bain Capital. Now, why did he do that? And why did McCain’s team ask him to do that?
Romney turned the records for Bain Capital over to McCain because he is ambitious and he wanted to be selected as McCain’s running mate, and he knew McCain would never consider him for the job if he didn’t provide the records that had been requested. McCain wanted the records from Bain Capital because he wanted to know whether Mitt Romney had any vulnerabilities that might embarrass him and potentially cost him the chance to win the election and become president.
Now, why should we the people not operate with these same assumptions? Shouldn’t we, like McCain, refuse to consider Romney’s candidacy if he won’t show us his records? And shouldn’t we, like McCain, be worried that he’ll embarrass us and our country if it turns out that he has things in his record that he had good reason to hide?
What makes John McCain more important than the voters? He looked at those twenty-three years of tax returns and thought Sarah Palin, a person he met once and barely knew, would be a better more responsible choice. If Romney won’t let us make up our own minds about his tax returns, maybe we should just defer to McCain’s judgment then. We’ll assume that Romney is worse than Palin.
And it’s not just that I want to hassle Romney or that I think every presidential candidate should release every tax record they’ve ever created. But Romney is obviously hiding something, so now I want to know what McCain apparently knew. I think all Americans should know at least as much as John McCain knows. Why is that unreasonable?
Well, I’d sure like to know what he’s hiding, but not because I’m worried he’ll embarrass us or the country. My hope is that people who might otherwise vote for him will be horrified and decide not to vote for him. So you can see how the equation for him, in deciding whether to be forthcoming, is very different — unless of course we can, as a people, be just as insistent on seeing what’s there as McCain and his team were.
It’s fascinating that he’s willing to take soooo much heat – going back to when it looked like he wouldn’t even get the nomination – rather than release them and be done with it.
Josh Marshall had a post where he said to watch Steve Schmidt, who’s seen the 23-year record. If YOU had seen them, and there was nothing really horrible, wouldn’t you advise him to release them? And McCain himself is just the type of faux contrarian who would be likely to come out publicly and say “release them” to burnish his mavericky creds at no cost. Since neither of those guys has said a word …
wait – I didn’t see this in the link:
“”I don’t think it’s necessary,” McCain said Sunday morning during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” when asked by host Bob Schieffer whether Romney should release his tax returns for the past two decades.
When Schieffer pointed out that Romney gave his returns to McCain’s vetting team four years ago, McCain noted that “we agreed with everybody we considered that that would remain confidential.””
hmmmm … they must be ugly
Of course they are. The man is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars. If we saw how little he’s paid in income tax, we’d probably not only not vote for him, but we’d insist that rich people start paying way more in taxes or we’ll stop paying anything.
Even if everything he’s done is legal, people would still be outraged. They might even be more outraged if it’s legal.
.
Perhaps some indication from Willard’s ‘public’ years as Director at Marriott. BTW, his ‘retirement’ package from Bain Capital was a profits deal over a period of 10 years: feb. 1999 through feb. 2009. Moreover, much of his income from the arrangement has probably qualified for a lower tax rate than ordinary income under a tax provision favorable to hedge fund and private equity managers. This period is private and should be out of bounds.
This comment is part of my new diary – Mitt Romney Campaigns In Compounding Lies About Bain Tenure.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Private-Equity Lobbying Helped Protect Romney’s Tax Benefits
“Yet when it came to his considerable personal wealth, Mr. Romney never really left Bain. In what would be the final deal of his private equity career,
he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain’s profits ever since.”
Another quote, creating income while doing nothing?
“We are able to demonstrate our belief that quintessential capital gains are all about creating something out of nothing. That’s what venture capital does.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Quarter of a trillion, eh?
I didn’t know Romney was the richest guy alive. By a factor of three.
sorry, billion.
A commenter elsewhere or here said that it must be an interesting VP search, especially if the Romney camp is asking possible VP candidates to see THEIR tax returns going back farther than what Romney is himself willing to submit.
I guess ambition trumps pride or something, but I’d be damned if I turned over my tax returns for say 10 years that ole Mittens won’t even give his returns for 2 years.
I think that would be an interesting question for a reporter to ask.
h/t Comment I read on another blog…sorry I can’t remember who.
Sometimes Boo, you write a column that is worthy of syndication world-wide. Why did McCain prefer Palin to Romney having seen his tax returns says it all – even to the most low information voter… Has the makings of a good Obama ad, don’t you think?
Actually, by the end of the 2008 primary campaign, McCain supposedly loathed Romney so much that it was an open secret that there was no way McCain would put Mitt on the ticket.
Still a good line of attack – they have no effective counter.
Indeed – McCain can either say he didn’t pick RMoney because of his tax status, or because he loathed the guy. Either way it puts pressure on McCain to explain his choice – and on RMoney to explain why he gave his tax returns to McCain but not to the American people. (Did he want the VP job more than the Presidency?)
“What did McCain know that RMoney doesn’t want YOU to know” could be a good strap line and bumper sticker. A 5 sec. ad could get that message across.
I wonder if Mitt’s ripping off the USA tax-wise was part of that?
As I recall, McCain loathed Romney just based on their public debates and personal interactions during the campaign…but it could be that too. (Although McCain’s never been very forthcoming about his finances either.)
Perhaps the stonewalling has something to do with the “number of dependents.”
This tax return thing is a delicate balance. If it looks like the Dems are trying to make Romney look like a crook, they will have a hard time. He just seems too squeaky clean. Mormon, and all. But the line has to be how he gamed the system, how his great wealth gave him privilege to avoid taxes to such a degree that even low-info voters can see that “this isn’t fair” and there is nothing about this man that makes him capable of appreciating their lot in life. Out of touch.
The American society has warped capitalism with a false sense of “privacy”, as well as, a exaggerated belief that money comes from hard work and rich people’s hard work is somehow more worthy than poor people’s hard work; the royalty worship syndrome.
Why is there any question of financial privacy in reference to taxes? Isn’t it really because the tax code favors the wealthy, the small minority of American citizens.
He looks like the perfect embodiment of a crook. A squeaky-clean, holier-than-thou, upper-class-twit crook. That’s why this is so damaging. It reinforces the feeling that already exist. He’s the epitome of these guys who steal billions with a pen and are rewarded with yacht clubs.
It reinforces the feeling that already exist. He’s the epitome of these guys who steal billions with a pen and are rewarded with yacht clubs.
And the Republican primary electorate and party elites nominated him in this of all years, when issues of economic inequality and the outsized political influence of the ultrarich and the financial industry are at the center of American politics.
Boy, those conservatives really showed us, didn’t they? They’re not going to be pushed around by some liberals. OWS doesn’t like billionaires? Oh yeah, well suck. on. this, libs! Boo yah!
Well played, GOP.
To be fair — the fundie, racist, and Paultards bases of the GOP didn’t nominate the Mittster. They just couldn’t agree to rally around one of the more obvious general election losers. They know full well that the banksters shoved the Mittster on them. Keep reminding them of that and maybe they’ll just stay home this year.
Mitt only claims 3 residences. That’s absurd. McCain claimed 14.
After reading Oui’s quotes you have to ask how many of Mitt’s tax strategies have landed him in IRS audits? And how often and why has Bain seen an IRS audit?
We already know his Mitt’s CorporationsRpeopleMyFriend were at the forefront (arguably the developers) of exercising global outsourcing techniques; that his circle of friends created and leveraged tax sheltering tweeks and lobbied Congress for more; that what he sheltered left his America the Beautiful shy of her fair share to rebuild infrastructure, to this day.
It’s not that he’s wealthy. It’s that he taught Bain the monetary value of cheating its/their Country.
Only Romney can release his tax returns. It would illegal for anyone else to do it.
I can’t wait until we get back to the $100,000,000 IRA. (And we will.)
It’s something that even low-information voters can scratch their heads about: “How’d he do that?”
It goes right to the heart of gaming the system. IRAs were invented as a sop to all the middle-class schlubs who were losing their defined-benefit pensions (thanks to the advice of high-priced consultants like Bain’s parent company), and here’s a rich guy who waltzes in and abuses their puny tax benefit for enormous personal gain.
well, I’m one of those middle class schlubs, so I’d say “our” puny tax benefit