This won’t go away soon…
The Obama campaign is continuing to hammer away at Mitt Romney’s apparent lies about his tenure at Bain Capital. To recap, the crux of their argument is that he either lied on his SEC filings or he’s lying to the American voters now.
They released two new ads today which will be rolling out soon.
Before I give you a sneak peak, I just want to point out something that is getting lost in the shuffle about Mitt Romney’s refusal to release more than one year of tax returns: Not only has Romney not released them, he has not told the American voters WHY he won’t release them. Ponder that while you’re considering what’s in them that he doesn’t want us to see. As I said yesterday, I suspect that he actually pays less in taxes than he’s told us he does. Maybe a LOT less.
Here’s the vids:
“Mitt Romney’s Bain Secret Exposed”
“Your Turn”
President Obama himself weighed in on this topic this week on “CBS This Morning”
CHARLIE ROSE: How do you take the measure of his business experience?PRESIDENT OBAMA: I do not think at all it disqualifies him. But I also think it’s important if that’s his main calling card, if his basic premise is that “I’m Mr. Fix It on the economy because I made a lot of money.”
ROSE: That’s not what he’s saying.
OBAMA: That is to some degree what he says is he understands the economy and the private sector.
ROSE: And they built businesses and made them better. But invested and made them better.
OBAMA: Exactly. That’s his premise. I think it is entirely appropriate to look at that record and see whether in fact his focus was in creating jobs and if he successfully did that and when you look at the record, there are questions there that have to be asked.
ROSE: Like what?
OBAMA: Look, as I said, when some people questioned why I would challenge his Bain record, the point I made there in the past is, if you’re a head of a large equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money. It’s not to create jobs. It’s not even to create successful businesses. It’s to make sure you’re maximizing returns for your investor. Now, that’s appropriate. That’s part of the American way. That’s part of the system. But that doesn’t necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole because, as president, my job is to think about the workers, my job is to think about communities where jobs have been outsourced and so it is not that he is disqualified because of what he’s done. It is if that’s your main claim, since he doesn’t talk about the fact that he was the governor of Massachusetts for four years very much —
ROSE: or ran the Olympics.
OBAMA: Then I want us to make sure that we know what your theory is about how to grow the economy. And that is a question that I think most Americans want to know as well. This is the nature of running for President.
President Bill Clinton also weighed in this week on the TODAY show on the topic of Mitt Romney’s refusal to release more than one year of his tax returns:
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Recently the Democrats have been emphasizing Mitt Romney’s personal investments, the fact that he has some accounts in Switzerland, in the Caymans, and I wonder whether you feel this is a legitimate line of attack against Mitt Romney, if you think this is relevant to his fitness to be president?BILL CLINTON: Oh, yes, I do. I think for one thing – just as relevant as going over my record as Governor when I ran for President. I had been governor for a dozen years. And because he’s put it at the forefront. He said basically, “I’d be a better president because I know how to create jobs because that’s what I did.” And he’s going to take credit for running a successful Olympics, for example. So when all your work life before you run for President is relevant. I think that will be relevant.
I am a little surprised that he only released a year’s worth of tax returns. That’s kind of perplexed me, because this is the first time in, I don’t know, more than 30 years that anybody running for president has only done that. You know, it’s typical we all release 10, 11 years. I think Senator McCain released over 20 years of tax returns. That I think has been – that struck me as a little odd.
GUTHRIE: This has to do with whether or not he placed his own money in legal tax shelters overseas.
CLINTON: The public ought to know that. The voters can make up their own mind about whether they think it’s a good thing to — for a person who wants to be President to minimize his own tax liability by putting the money in overseas tax shelters. And they can decide whether they believe that or not.
