Harry Reid’s Super Secret Mitt Romney Tax Information
August 2, 2012 17 Comments
A little birdie has spoken in Sen. Harry Reid’s ear and told him that Mitt Romney didn’t pay income taxes for a decade. According to Reid, a Bain investor told him these “facts” about Romney. Reid won’t name the investor and won’t tell anyone how exactly an investor has information about Mitt Romney’s private tax returns. That of course hasn’t stopped Reid from spouting this nonsense from the floor of the Senate. We used to believe it was wicked to bear false witness. We used to believe that people were innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately Democrats no longer believe this.
Reid doesn’t have the slightest bit of evidence that Romney didn’t pay taxes. That a Bain “investor” told him this really calls into question Reid’s credibility. Anyone could claim to be a Bain investor. Just because someone is a Bain investor doesn’t mean they’re privy to any tax information concerning private individuals working at Bain. In fact, tax returns are private. Unless someone steals Mitt Romney’s tax returns, they would have no idea how much he paid in tax. Let’s also keep in mind that Romney hasn’t worked for Bain since 1999. So what 10 years are we talking about here? Surely not the period between 1999-2009 when Romney wasn’t even working for Bain Capital.
This notion that we are entitled to see Presidential candidates tax returns is absolutely ridiculous. No one seemed to care about Obama’s tax returns before he became President. President’s Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 didn’t release any of their tax returns prior to becoming President. So why exactly do we need to look at Mitt Romney’s? In fact since the income tax was created in 1913 Presidential candidate tax returns have never been an issue until 2013. Make no mistake we’ve had candidates richer than Romney over the last century. If it hasn’t mattered to Americans before, why do tax returns suddenly matter now?
Obama’s historic course of action against his opponents is to smear them personally to the point that he becomes the only alternative. In 2004 he smeared his Senate opponent in the Democrat primary having information about his sealed divorce records leaked to the press. In the general election the Obama team got a California judge to unseal his Republican opponent’s child custody records. In both of these cases Obama’s team forced the unsealing of private records, none of which showed anything particularly negative about his opponents.
But that didn’t stop Obama’s surrogates from complaining that there was something in the records. Obama’s team is trying to do the same thing to Romney. They don’t have any divorce records to demand, in fact they don’t even have any lawsuits to demand a peak at. So they’re going to pretend like there’s something in Romney’s tax records that prove he really is a bad guy. Romney is innocent until proven guilty. If it means that Harry Reid has to make up stories on the Senate floor so be it.
Harry Reid is lying about Mitt Romney. He has absolutely no evidence that Romney didn’t pay taxes for a decade. If he has such evidence, by all means he should come forward with it so Romney can be indicted and prosecuted for tax evasion. But of course Reid doesn’t have any evidence. He’s lying or in the alternative he’s repeating a lie. Here in America a man is innocent until proven guilty. We don’t get to simply accuse people of committing crimes or even of doing things that present them in a bad light without evidence. Reid simply doesn’t have any evidence Romney didn’t pay taxes. There is no Bain investor with super secret information and if there is he should come forward with it. Until then, Reid should stop bearing false witness against Mitt Romney.
UPDATE: Obama and Reid might not be able to prove Romney committed a tax crime but they do have his high school report card. Yeah, that’s right, the media is running around with Mitt Romney’s high school report card. Could it get more ridiculous?
About Steven
I couldn’t agree more, Steven. Obama is operating with the assumption that if something is repeated enough times, it will become the truth. Harry Reid is using that same tactic. Shameful is the only word I can think of.
It isn’t just shameful, it’s sinful. What Harry Reid is up to isn’t political conjecture or hyperbole. What he’s doing is accusing someone without the slightest bit of evidence.
I hear Harry Reid and Barney Frank are having a homosexual love affair. It’s true unless Sen. Reid can prove otherwise! You can clearly see the danger of allowing people to make baseless statements and then requiring the victim to prove his innocence. Scripture has no tolerance for such nonsense and we should not tolerate it from our elected officials. Either Harry Reid has actual evidence that Romney committed a crime or he should stifle himself.
Wrong Steve, you only have to repeat something once for those on the far right to believe its truth-as long as it supports their paranoid, fantasy view of the world.
You are also dead wrong about the release of Presidential tax returns.
The Tax History Project run by TaxAnalysts has a fascinating Web page with the tax returns of presidents and presidential candidates, dating all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt. McCain, it is correct, released two years of tax returns, but Obama released seven years of tax returns.
In fact, McCain is really the exception. John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000, George W. Bush in 2000, Bob Dole in 1996, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 all released many years of tax returns when they ran for president against the incumbent, either at the time or because they had routinely released tax returns while in public office. (There was no incumbent in 2000.) Dole, in fact, released tax returns for a whopping 30 years.
Of course, Romney’s father, George Romney, is famous for having released 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in 1968, saying “one year could be a fluke.” As BuzzFeed showed, he paid an effective tax rate of 50 percent — those were days before the Reagan tax cuts.
And what of Kerry’s wife? Romney must have missed the controversy, largely fanned by Republicans, about her tax returns, in which they darkly suggested that she was secretly funding her husband’s presidential campaign. (She inherited the Heinz fortune from her late husband, and it was worth at least $500 million.)
A quick check of the clips shows that it was rather big issue, so much so that she eventually made public the first two pages of her 2003 return.
That was not enough for Republicans, who wanted an even broader look. Amusingly, we see that the Wall Street Journal editorial page complained that, with an effective tax rate of 12.4 percent, “she is paying a lower average rate than nearly all middle-class taxpayers paid in 2001” — similar to the line that the Obama campaign has been using about Romney’s tax rate.
Romney, in his Senate race against Ted Kennedy in 1994, demanded that Kennedy release his tax returns, and Kennedy refused. In his 2002 race for governor, Romney cited Kennedy’s refusal, quoting him as saying, “I value my privacy.” Romney added: “I think he was right and I was wrong.” He never released his tax returns in that campaign.
However, Romney did provide the McCain campaign with 23 years’ worth of tax returns as part of the vetting process for being considered for vice president. Those returns were not released publicly. The Romney tax returns for the years 2008 and 2009, which he has not released or shared with others, would reflect his earnings during the depths of the recent economic crisis.
Actually I’m right according to the Tax History Project, which is where I got my information in the first place. Reagan, Carter, Clinton and both Bushes didn’t release any of their tax returns prior to becoming President. Thus their tax returns were not an issue in their run for the White House. They released tax returns only after becoming President. As for FDR, he never released any of his tax records while he was President. They were released after he died.
http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/PresidentialTaxReturns?OpenDocument
The tax return demands are nothing short of ridiculous. It’s a desprate attempt by Obama and the Democrats to find something to personally attack Romney over because they cannot win the battle of ideas against the Republicans in this election. That Reid has to resort to little birdies, real or imagined, whispering in his hear about Romney’s tax returns says a lot about these people. There is absolutely zero evidence that Romney cheated on his taxes. In this country we don’t presume people guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Yet this is exactly what the Democrats wish to do with Romney. It’s obscene.
For the record, my computer won’t let me open up any of the tax returns. So it isn’t clear to me if Clinton’s 1992 tax return is for the year 1992 or if it was the tax return filed in 1992, which would be for the 1991 tax year. Same for Bush’s 2000 tax return. Let’s say the 1992 return is the one Clinton filed in that calendar year, it’s still no more than what Romney has offered. If it represents the 1992 tax year, it would have been filed in 1993 and thus it wouldn’t have even been available to voters in the 1992 election.
Oh, then how can you say that you are right if you can’t even get your computer functioning. And its interesting that we both cite the same source. Fortunately, my Mac is working just fine. Let me know if you would like me to post copies.
You know, there you go again, “obscene” ,Really, obscene” ? In a political campaign to use such dirty tactics. Well then, I’ll bet you were enraged by the Bush “Willy Horton” commercials. For the benefit of your readers see if you can find something you wrote castigating the Bush people for that “obscene” campaign tactic. It will show your readers that you are in fact a reasonable person not intellectually beholden to your far right ideology-someone who is above the everyday prejudices and bias that so inflict people on the left. Someone who can see and face the truth whether it supports your world view or not. You are. of course. without ideological bias are you not? You see the truth and you are not influenced by your preconceived notions of a matter? And that is why you are right so often-because you are free of ideological distortion.
Yes, Steve, you are amazing.
Have you ever seen the Willie Horton ad?
My point on the tax returns is that Clinton and Bush 43 did not offer the public more tax returns when they first ran for President than Mitt Romney has. Clinton might not have been worth a fortune but Bush had money. No one cared then so why should we care about Romney’s taxes now?
Think I’m with you re: tax returns in general, Steve. It seems mostly like a voyeuristic exercise.
That said, I think there is a kind of unique interesting dynamic to it this time around, given the competing visions for how to handle the economy. We have an explicitly anti-tax candidate whose prescription for the economy (the Ryan plan) is to reduce the tax burden on the rich (producers/job-creators), who also may simultaneously be legally paying an extremely low tax rate. It is one thing to argue over-burden when paying a top marginal rate >80% (1940-1963) it is another thing entirely if your top rate is 15%. If this is the case, right or wrong, I think it makes for powerful political and policy anecdotes. Kind of a pickle, it seems to me.
Has Romney offered anything in regards to taxes other than an extension of the Bush tax cuts? Around 80% of those cuts were for the middle class. I haven’t seen anything from Romney to suggest he’s a massive tax cutter. If anything he doesn’t want them raised. As for taxes, the top marginal rate is 35%.
Well, the Ryan plan is about the best we can go on as he has voiced consistent support. The Ryan plan has two tax rates: 10% and 25%. http://cbo.gov/publication/22085
From Romney: “I’m not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest, I’m looking to bring tax rates down for everyone,” On Face the Nation (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57454771/mitt-romney-stands-by-anti-tax-pledge/).
We can debate whether he is right that dropping tax rates will be good policy, but you can’t reasonably argue that it isn’t his plan/preference – the quotes are everywhere.
I understand that the top marginal rate is 35%….at least for regular income and the rate is applied progressively, so the effective rate is lower. For capital gains and dividend income, the rate is 15%. Hedge fund ‘salaries’ (so called ‘carried interest’), too. So, much of the money earned by venture capital firm owners is actually taxed at a max of 15%. Of course, the rate is applied to ‘taxable income’, which is where the loopholes/tax haven/etc. action lives. If you have the resources to leverage the system, your effective tax rate will end up much lower than the stated top marginal rate, even if it were 15%. Romney’s one released tax return is testament to this fact.
Still think it’s a pickle for him.
Romney has said he likes the Ryan plan but he has in no way said it is the plan he is going to run with.
Also, you’re confusing capital gains taxes and income tax. Romney pays capital gains taxes, which are taxes on invested money. Such money has already been earned via labor and is invested at risk. There’s a big difference between the two forms of income.
I agree re: the Ryan plan. That is why I said “about the best we can go on as he has voiced consistent support”. Sure seems unlikely that he would voice consistent support if he disagreed the with fundamental revenue plan (i.e. tax rates). That is also why I shared a quote of him saying that he wants lower taxes. Lower taxes are a proud key component the Republican brand and plan to stimulate the economy – I don’t understand why you are hesitant to accept it is Romney’s position.
As for income types, Capital Gains is line 13 on your 1040 income tax return. I’m not arguing for or against a particular rate; I’m just saying that a huge chunk of Romney’s income, including the money he received from private equity at Bain, doesn’t get taxed at anywhere near the 35% top marginal rate. In 2010 he had no wages; just interest and capital gains. His taxable income was $21.6M. His tax was $3M or ~14%. Slightly lower if you use total income instead of taxable.
This is why it becomes a bit uncomfortable for him to argue that he was unduly burdened by taxes, especially if he was making major bank during the Bain years and paying a similarly low rate. Again, I’m not saying right or wrong, just that is an interesting position from which to argue and many will see it as fundamentally unjust.
Steve,you were right about Roosevelt. His tax returns were not released until after his death.
Bravo!
Bush’s 2000 tax return is the one for the 2000 tax year filed after he entered office as is Clintons 1992 return.
That’s what I figured, for whatever reason my computer wasn’t letting me open them. If the Democrats didn’t care about Bush’s return why should we take them seriously now that they care about Romney’s?
i think harry reid, nancy pelosi, and obama should all show their taxes and their birth certificates,and maybe how they made their millions.
I think some of their tax returns are out there and they all have to release investment and asset information. There is plenty about Obama that isn’t known though. Apparently someone leaked Mitt Romney’s high school transcript, one wonders why Obama never has similar leaks.