Mitt Romney Booed For Waffling On Releasing Tax Returns (VIDEO)

CNN debate moderator John King put all the GOP presidential candidates on the spot about their tax returns Thursday night, asking whether they will make their filings public.

It was an easy question for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who released his returns just as the debate began.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said he hadn't given the issue much thought and didn't have any intention of doing so.

"I'd probably be embarrassed to put my financial statement up against their income," Paul said, referring to the wealth of the other candidates. "I don't want to be embarrassed because I don't have a greater income. Now, I mean, it may come to that. But right now, I have no intention of doing that."

He added that he has no conflicts of interest, doesn't talk to lobbyists and doesn't "take that kind of money."

Romney, who has faced the most pressure on this topic, said he will release his tax returns in April, if he's the nominee, and would "probably" release his returns from other years as well.

He quickly tried to change the topic, saying Democrats simply wanted to attack people for "being successful."

"And I have been successful," he added before hitting President Obama for playing "90 rounds of golf" while Americans are struggling in the tough economy.

King pointed out that Republicans are often calling on Romney to release his tax filings.

"Why not, should the people of South Carolina, before this election, see last year's return?" asked King to applause from the audience.

"Because I want to make sure that I beat President Obama," replied Romney. "Every time we release things drip by drip, the Democrats go out with another array of attacks. As has been done in the past, I'll put these out at one time so we have one discussion of all of this. I obviously pay all full taxes. I'm honest in my dealings with people. People understand that. My taxes are carefully managed. I pay a lot of taxes. I've been very successful. When I have our taxes ready for this year, I'll release them."

Romney recently revealed that his effective tax rate is 15 percent, below the rate paid by many middle-class families.

Gingrich did not directly attack Romney, saying, "Look, he's got to decide. The people of South Carolina have to decide. If there's anything in there that will help us lose the election, we should know it before the nomination."

Santorum said he does his own taxes.

"They're on my computer and I'm not home," he said. "And there's nobody at home right now until I get home. When I get home, you'll get my taxes."

Finally, Romney refused to commit to the transparency and disclosure of his father, George Romney, who was governor of Michigan. In 1967, the elder Romney released his tax returns for 12 years.

"Maybe. I don't know how many years I'll release," responded Mitt Romney when asked if he'd follow in his father's footsteps. "I'll take a look at what our documents are." The audience booed him.

"I'm not going to apologize for being successful," he added. "I'm not suggesting these people are doing that. But I know the Democrats will go after me on that basis. That's why I want to release these things all at the same time. My dad, as you know, born in Mexico, poor, didn't get a college degree, became head of a car company. I could have stayed in Detroit like him and gotten pulled up in the car -- I went off on my own. I didn't inherit money from my parents. What I have, I earned. I worked hard. The American way."

Also on HuffPost:

Background on Mitt Romney's campaign:

• Moving Forward

  Mitt Romney lost to Rick Santorum in Louisiana, but he maintains a lead in the delegate race. His campaign also continues to dominate the GOP field in fundraising. Romney's next stop is Wisconsin, where he's touting his economic record.

• Widening Lead

  Mitt Romney continued to grow his lead in delegates with the Illinois primary, which he won commandingly, with a double-digit margin over Rick Santorum. The victory helped Romney further along his path to the nomination. But his team quickly followed it with a gaffe. The next day, senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom compared Romney's campaign to an Etch A Sketch, saying the general election would represent a "reset button."

• On The Upswing

  After a rocky road in the South, Mitt Romney came back with a pair of impressive primary victories. The former Massachusetts governor overwhelmingly won Puerto Rico primary with more than 80 percent of the vote. Romney is a firm supporter of statehood, while Rick Santorum, his chief GOP rival, controversially suggested English should be the main language in the U.S. territory. Romney's big Caribbean win came despite the fact that he shortened his Puerto Rico visit to focus on campaigning in Illinois, a critical primary state. Romney emerged victorious in Illinois, picking up at least 41 delegates. Leading in the delegate count, Romney looks to be on track to clinch his party's nomination.

• The Race Goes On

  Mitt Romney's campaign admitted that primaries in the Deep South represented "a bit of an away game," and he lost to Rick Santorum in both Alabama and Mississippi. Romney still maintains a wide lead in delegates, but the prolonged fight has increasingly stressed the campaign's finances, forcing Romney to break from states with upcoming primaries to raise money in New York.

• Back In The Game

  After a string of losses, Mitt Romney ended February with double wins in Michigan and Arizona. HuffPost's Jon Ward reports:

  Mitt Romney's narrow win over Rick Santorum in Michigan on Tuesday, combined with his decisive win in Arizona, allowed his campaign a sigh of relief. He knew he had narrowly missed hitting an iceberg. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had 41 percent to Santorum's 38 percent, with 99 percent of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. Romney won Arizona with 47 percent to Santorum's 27 percent, with 89 percent of the vote counted. "We didn't win by a lot but we won by enough and that's all that counts," said Romney, who was measured in his exuberance, reflecting in his body language the knowledge that a long fight still lies ahead.

  Heading into Super Tuesday, the Romney campaign is focused on Ohio, where polling shows him neck-and-neck with Rick Santorum.

• Still Confident

  Recent polling shows Mitt Romney tied with Rick Santorum - or lagging behind - in Michigan, but his campaign is staying positive. "We're going to win Michigan," Romney adviser Stuart Stevens said after the GOP debate in Arizona. Romney has garnered endorsements from several of his home state's major newspapers, including The Detroit News, The Oakland Press and the Detroit Free Press. But the Free Press endorsement was less than glowing:

  For the past 12 months, Romney has been refashioning himself as something other than what his record suggests. He has made gestures toward economic and social radicalism, and eschewed the common sense of cooperative governing that made him a success in Massachusetts. Romney was also dead wrong when he opposed government bailouts for the auto industry (Michigan's most vital economic engine) in late 2008. And he has since adopted a recalcitrant and, at times, revisionist defense of his position in the face of overwhelming evidence that the bailouts he opposed were necessary. [...] That's a mistake he will need to correct if he becomes the GOP nominee and hopes to even compete with President Barack Obama in the fall. But Romney, unlike the zealous Rick Santorum, the impulsive Newt Gingrich and the backward-thinking Ron Paul, is preferable to the rest of the field.

  A Detroit News editor later complained that Romney had removed critical sections from the paper's endorsement. The campaign claimed that it did so to avoid copyright infringement, but at least one attorney had said that excuse doesn't pass muster.

• Tied For First

  Once considered the presumptive front-runner, Romney is now struggling to break away from rival Rick Santorum. Mark Blumenthal reports that Romney might find smoother sailing ahead:

  Although the national polls currently show a close race, Romney's campaign is well organized and flush with cash and thus able to compete for delegates in every state. For now, Santorum's campaign must focus more narrowly on the upcoming primaries. Moreover, the majority of Republicans continue to believe that Romney will win. On the CNN/ORC International poll, for example, more than two thirds of Republicans (68 percent) now say they expect Romney to win the Republican nomination, up from 41 percent in December. And if Romney does win? Two thirds of Republicans on the CNN poll say they would be either "enthusiastic" (21 percent) or "pleased" (44 percent), while only 11 percent say they would be "upset" -- 25 percent say they would be "displeased but not upset." Taken together, these results tell us that while the polling volatility may continue, most Republicans remain open to a Romney nomination.

• 'Severely Conservative'

  After a rough week, Mitt Romney headed to Washington to prove his conservative bona fides at CPAC, stressing his upbringing and his history as a governor and business leader:

  Mitt Romney gave one of the most important speeches during his second turn as a presidential candidate on Friday at CPAC, and instead of just defending his credentials to the audience of grassroots activists, he suggested that he is the most authentic conservative in the Republican primary. The presidential hopeful said he "fought against long odds in a deep blue state" while serving as governor of Massachusetts and that he was "severely conservative" during his tenure. Romney acknowledged to the crowd that he did not come to conservatism as a young activist, telling them that if he had heard the names of foundational authors Friedrich Hayek or Edmund Burke when he was a young man, "you could have told me they were infielders for the Detroit Tigers." "My path to conservatism came from my family, from my faith and from my life's work," Romney said. "Those aren't values that I just talk about. They're values I live every day." "I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism," Romney said.

  A day later, Romney's campaign got another boost when he won the Maine caucus, defeating Ron Paul by 3 points.

• Bad Day

  Mitt Romney's campaign hit a setback with his triple losses to Rick Santorum in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Although Romney didn't seem overly worried during his concession speech, the results underscore some of his weaknesses as a candidate.

• Caucus Season Battles

  Mitt Romney aimed to preserve his frontrunner status as he entered caucus season in early February. He started the month strongly, with a decisive victory in the Nevada caucus. With Rick Santorum poised to gain a bit of momentum in Colorado and Minnesota, Romney ramped up rhetoric geared at social conservatives. He slammed Obama for his policies on birth control and emergency contraception, stating that "This kind of assault on religion will end if I'm president of the United States." Romney won both Minnesota and Colorado during his 2008 bid for the nomination.

• Westward Bound

  After a big win in the Florida primary, Mitt Romney headed west to keep the momentum rolling. Polls show the former governor with a commanding lead in Nevada, while rival Newt Gingrich continues to slip. The morning after his victory in Florida, the former governor hit a bit of a snag when he continued a streak of poorly phrased remarks that call attention to his time at Bain Capital. During an interview with CNN, Romney said that he's "not concerned about the very poor," a line that other candidates quickly jumped on.

• Regaining Momentum

  Mitt Romney enters the Florida Primary with a very solid lead in the polls. Poll averages show the former Massachusetts governor around 41 percent, over 12 points ahead of rival Newt Gingrich. With a win in Florida's winner-take-all contest looking increasingly inevitable, his campaign has started to look ahead to future nominating contests. AP reported on Romney's future beyond the Sunshine State:

  Romney's advisers -- and unaffiliated Republicans -- see a widening path to victory beyond Florida. "A lot of the contests are states he won four years ago. Some of them are big primary states like Michigan. Arizona, we didn't get to in 2008, but we think that's good, fertile territory for us," said Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. "Other states -- Colorado, Minnesota, Maine -- these are all contests we won in the past, where Mitt still retains a strong base of support."

• Battling Newt

  Mitt Romney's campaign suffered a blow in South Carolina, when GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich won the state's primary with 40 percent of the vote. Romney came in second with 28 percent. Romney struggled to garner excitement from the conservative voting block in the Palmetto state. Heading into Florida, Gingrich continued to surge in the polls, challenging Romney's frontrunner status. In Florida, the two candidates hammered each other with negative attack ads. In the final debate before Florida's 2012 primary, Romney came out swinging against Gingrich, but the former House speaker held back his usual fiery, aggressive attacks, propelling Romney to a victory in the critical debate.

• Concedes Iowa

  More than two weeks after the Iowa caucus, a final certified tally showed Rick Santorum actually won the contest, beating Mitt Romney by 24 votes, 29,839 to 29,805. The Des Moines Register reported that votes from eight precincts will never be counted, however, and therefore the ultimate tally remains inconclusive. HuffPost's Elise Foley reports:

  Officials found inaccurate counts in 131 precincts, including one that had an error by 50 votes, the Des Moines Register reported on Thursday. Chad Olsen, the party's executive director, told the Register that the results showed "a split decision." The final tallies, exempting the eight precincts that will not be tallied, were 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney, according to the Register. The Santorum campaign said the change in results could change the narrative of Romney as a frontrunner.

  Romney called Santorum to congratulate him on the win, CNN reported.

• Pressure To Release Tax Return

  Mitt Romney has declined to release his tax returns, despite pressure from his Republican presidential rivals and the White House to do so. At a GOP debate in South Carolina, a stuttering Romney said he will "probably" release his tax records in April if he becomes the party's nominee. He acknowledged it is the tradition for candidates to reveal their tax information, but said doing so at this point in the election would only give Democrats reason to go after him. Romney later revealed that his effective tax rate is 15 percent, below the rate paid by many middle-class families. Romney was booed for again waffling on the issue at the final GOP debate in South Carolina, days before the state's primary. HuffPost's Amanda Terkel reports:

  "Why not, should the people of South Carolina, before this election, see last year's return?" asked [moderator John] King to applause from the audience. "Because I want to make sure that I beat President Obama," replied Romney. "Every time we release things drip by drip, the Democrats go out with another array of attacks. As has been done in the past, I'll put these out at one time so we have one discussion of all of this. I obviously pay all full taxes. I'm honest in my dealings with people. People understand that. My taxes are carefully managed. I pay a lot of taxes. I've been very successful. When I have our taxes ready for this year, I'll release them."

  Romney finally released his tax records for 2010, on Jan. 24. The records show he paid an effective rate of 13.9 percent in 2010, considerably lower than the average middle class American. The records also show Romney had a Swiss bank account. Two days later Romney revised his disclosures for his overseas account. From NBC:

  Mitt Romney could face new questions about his overseas investments after a campaign official acknowledged to NBC News that his campaign is revising his federal ethics forms to report more than a half dozen offshore holdings, including income from a multi-million dollar Swiss bank account that was not disclosed last year.

• Endorsements

  Romney continues to pick up high-profile endorsements such as. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole have backed Romney. and an unofficial endorsement from former President George H.W. Bush. In a surprise to many, Tea Party favorites Nikki Haley and Christine O'Donnell have also backed Romney. On Jan. 15 Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman dropped out of the race and endorsed his former rival. Just as notable as Romney's growing roster of endorsements are the names absent from the list. Many national party leaders have not yet endorsed the frontrunner, or any of the Republican presidential candidates in the field.

• Early Success

  Despite the Republican Party's hesitance to unite around Mitt Romney, his campaign has surged as voters continue to believe he is the candidate with the best shot of beating President Obama. Romney won the New Hampshire primary and was originally declared the winner of the Iowa caucus. Even though Romney barely campaigned in Iowa, hoping to avoid an embarrassing repeat of his campaign-crushing loss in 2008, he seemed poised to emerge victorious over Rick Santorum in Hawkeye state, by just eight votes. Recounts later revised those results to put him in a close second. As expected, the former Massachusetts governor went on to easily win the first in the nation primary in neighboring New Hampshire.

• Battle For The Anti-Romney

  Throughout the presidential primary season, rival Republican candidates have surged past Romney only to fall back down to Earth. One after another, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Governor Rick Perry, former pizza CEO Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich each experienced a volatile bump and fall in their campaigns, while Romney stayed steadily at the top of the field. Due in part to this sense of inevitability and electability, Romney is poised for a strong finish in the Hawkeye State despite his rocky history with Iowa voters.

• Tea Party Opposition

  While Romney has achieved solid polling numbers both in key primary states and on the national level, one group of Tea Party organizers has publicly announced that their primary mission will be to deny him the GOP candidacy. HuffPost's Jon Ward reports:

  Interviews with top officials at FreedomWorks, a Washington-based organizing hub for Tea Party activists around the country, revealed that much of their thinking about the 2012 election revolves around derailing the former Massachusetts governor. "Romney has a record and we don't really like it that much," said Adam Brandon, the group's communications director.

  When Romney sought to extend an olive branch to the Tea Party with his official debut at a rally in New Hampshire, FreedomWorks followed through with their promise, though the turnout at the protest was minimal.

• Questionable Campaign Contributions

  While Mitt Romney has proven himself to be a formidable fundraiser over the course of his campaign, some of the donations have sparked intense scrutiny. HuffPost's Paul Blumenthal reports that Romney is blowing his competition out of the water when it comes to campaign cash from lobbyists:

  According to disclosure reports filed at the end of July, 61 registered lobbyists and five lobbyist-linked political action committees contributed $137,650 to Romney's campaign between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2011. The former Massachusetts governor raised more money from lobbyists during this period than all of his competitors combined.

  But the influx of lobbyist dollars into Romney's campaign isn't the only cash flow raising eyebrows. Over the summer, Romney drew fire after it was reported that an LLC popped up, donated $1 million to a pro-Romney super PAC, then vanished 3 months later. Ed Conard, former managing director of Bain Capital, the group that Romney co-founded and once headed, later came out as the name behind that group. Romney dismissed the questionable contribution days later at a townhall meeting, telling a questioner that there was "no harm, no foul."

• Mitt: Mormon -- And 'Weird'?

  Mitt Romney, son of former Michigan Governor and GOP presidential candidate George W. Romney, comes from a large family of Mormons whose bloodline runs into Mexico. From The Washington Post report on Romney's relatives south of the border:

  Three dozen of Mitt Romney's relatives live here in a narrow river valley at the foot of the western Sierra Madre mountains, surrounded by peach groves, apple orchards and some of the baddest, most fearsome drug gangsters and kidnappers in all of northern Mexico. Like Mitt, the Mexican Romneys are descendants of Miles Park Romney, who came to the Chihuahua desert in 1885 seeking refuge from U.S. anti-polygamy laws. He had four wives and 30 children, and on the rocky banks of the Piedras Verdes River, he and his fellow Mormon pioneers carved out a prosperous settlement beyond the reach of U.S. federal marshals. He was Mitt's great-grandfather.

  Whether or not questions of Romney's faith will be visibly at play in the 2012 cycle remains to be seen. Team Obama's attack plan against Romney will include reminders of the former governor's quirkiness, though no direct links to his religion, according to an earlier Politico piece:

  The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama's reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama's advisers in about a dozen interviews, "weird."

  Some have claimed that "weird" is simply a code word for "Mormon," a faith that some voters have appeared apprehensive about supporting in a White House bid. Romney himself has walked a line between addressing his religion upfront and downplaying its overall significance. But others say Romney's demeanor on the campaign trail is enough on its own to justify the Obama campaign's "weird" tactic: HuffPost's Jon Ward reported on Romney's campaign trail demeanor:

  There were awkward moments as well. He walked up to two women in their early 40s sitting at a booth together in Mary Ann's and asked, "Do you guys know each other?" A few minutes later, posing with a few waitresses, Romney nearly jumped away from them with a howl, pretending as if one of them had grabbed his backside. He laughed -- there is supposedly a backstory about someone actually pinching him a few years ago -- but it was nonetheless a jarring sight. Afterward the waitresses said they had not grabbed him.

  (More of Romney's awkward exchanges here.) Attempting to make a $10,000 bet at a GOP presidential debate didn't help Romney's image of being a multi-millionaire that's out of touch with the average American. Romney offered to bet Rick Perry $10K to settle the argument over whether his health care plan included an individual mandate that President Obama used as a model for his nationwide plan.

• Standing By RomneyCare

  Even before Romney's official entry into the 2012 race, Republican pundits around the country were urging the former Massachusetts governor to simply apologize for what they had determined to be his primary Achilles' heel: the state health care overhaul he helped push through in 2006. Instead, however, the one-time Blue state governor has taken a different tack. In a speech to the Michigan Cardiovascular Center in May, Romney addressed the health care reform plan, which the Obama camp has repeatedly cited as an inspiration for the national health care reform passed last year. He admitted that it was viewed as a liability, but defended it, portraying it as a fundamentally different program than the national law. HuffPost's Jon Ward reported at the time:

  Romney spent half of his speech defending the Massachusetts plan -- which required the six percent of the state's citizens who were not insured to obtain health insurance or pay a "bond" of roughly $125 a month -- before turning to a critique of President Obama's health care overhaul passed last year by Congress. He admitted that some of the aspects of the state plan, which has already led to government price controls to try to rein in costs, have not worked like he had hoped, but concluded: "Overall am I proud of the fact that we did our best for our people and got people insured? Absolutely."

  Romney has taken a few lumps from his rivals for his role in the reform package, and he can almost certainly expect to weather more before the primary is over.

• Pet Causes

  HuffPost's Andrea Stone reports on Romney's charitable efforts:

  The richest remaining candidate in the Republican presidential field has a net worth somewhere north of $200 million. With a fortune amassed as a venture capitalist at his firm, Bain Capital, he has been generous to many community, civic and political advocacy organizations. But the vast majority of his philanthropic contributions have gone to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the form of the tithes required of all Mormons in good standing. The former Massachusetts lay bishop has spoken candidly about his religious faith, but his prodigious contributions to the LDS Church will do little to mollify evangelical primary voters whom polls show have a deep prejudice against electing a Mormon president.

  For more on the giving habits of the other GOP presidential candidates, click here.

• Returning To The Trail

  Mitt Romney's strong second-place performance in the 2008 primary allowed him to effectively secure a default frontrunner status in the 2012 GOP race, even before his potential rivals were officially known. While his return to the campaign trail as a likely favorite has given him a chance to build his fundraising ties after spending much of his own money in the 2008 contest, the general lack of enthusiasm surrounding his candidacy has played a part in giving rise to fresh faces in the primary, such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Questions have also risen about the Romney campaign's earlier decision to keep him out of the trenches during prime stumping time over the summer. In early August Politico reported on the state of Romney's campaign, likening it to a "Mittness Protection Program:"

  This is hardly your traditional Rose Garden campaign, in which a strong incumbent or frontrunner molds politics to follow his non-political day job. Romney doesn't currently hold office or any other job. But more importantly, he's a Republican frontrunner of unprecedented weakness, and one whom the American people barely know. And while his advisers describe the decision as a strategic choice to pick only the big fights, it has obvious negative consequences: Romney's identity remains hazy, voters remain unmet, and his rare appearances raise the stakes for gaffe free - or at least vaguely normal - performances.

Comments

[stop the hypocrisy]

10:45 PM on 01/29/2012

Here's an answer that would have locked up the Presidency.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cyY9Lnel-k&sns=em

[SC341]

10:25 PM on 01/22/2012

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/the-book-on-mitt-romney-here-is-john-mccains-ent

[RepublicanDepression]

07:27 PM on 01/22/2012

Maybe Mitt Romney's dog ate his taxes?

Maybe that's why Mitt tortured the poor creature by forcing it to ride on the roof of his car for twelve hours.

[drhooper]

12:55 AM on 01/22/2012

Mitt Romney nor the Republican Party was prepared for the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Until the past six months Mitt's tax return would have only revealed he's rich....really rich. Mitt disclosed that he pays close to 15 percent and utilized tax advantages from capital gains/investment income. Everybody thinks he is hiding tax shelters in the Cayman (Maybe). I suspect what Mitt may not want the American people to know is that he received a tax rebate. Which means.... HE MADE A LOT OF MONEY FROM INVESTMENTS WHICH IS NOT TAXED LIKE EARNED INCOME. MITT GOT MONEY BACK FROM THE GOV'T. I bet 10,000 I owe yoozes!

[ivotedabsentee]

07:04 AM on 01/22/2012

[ HE MADE A LOT OF MONEY FROM INVESTMENT­S WHICH IS NOT TAXED LIKE EARNED INCOME. MITT GOT MONEY BACK FROM THE GOV'T]


Maybe. Most firms paying dividends don't take bakcup withholding on qualified dividends, so it is very likely that Romney may not get much of a refund from overpayment of withholdings based on dividend and capital gains payments.

http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099div/ar02.html#d0e439

[drhooper]

09:48 AM on 01/22/2012

Mitt makes a case for the President if he made more but paid less than his Republican candidate counterparts. We know Newt Grinch is rich, but not Mitt Romney Rich. The American people will be angered if Mitt did not write a check to the government at all. The American people will make all Republicans pay if Mitt got 1 red cent from the government.

[MarcDel]

09:36 AM on 01/21/2012

Not prepared for this question..............who are this guys handlers? I've seen better snake handlers.
Well maybe they are one in the same..............Nevermind.

[gatlinggun6]

07:58 PM on 01/21/2012

They are like their boss. Mittens is so arrogant as to think anything he has done in the private sector is above criticism. How dare the little people question what Mittens has done. If there's one word to describe Mittens, it's inauthentic. He wants us to believe that he has lived on main street when he has done nothing of the kind. You take Staples he runs around claiming that Staples is on of his successes. yet when you read the history of Staples how often is Mittens mentioned? Not a single time, because it was not his idea, nor was it his management that moved the corporation forward. Claiming he is responsible for the number of people employed at Staples is like Exxon Mobil claiming that they were responsible for NASCAR race win because they supplied the gas. Rowney is a phoney who has no idea how to act around regular people.

[RC81]

07:55 PM on 01/20/2012

It's been said before and I'll say it again.

Mitt: The rich 1% are not the cause of a robust economy, they are in fact the RESULT of a robust economy. We aren't envious of your riches. We don't think you're a bad man because of it. But please stop patting yourself on the back as though you are the SOLE reason for it. You've had a whole lot of help from your country. DON'T FORGET THAT!

[Celeste5793]

07:50 PM on 01/20/2012

Okay so Newt released his taxes for 2011 last night and he's a hero, and Romney and Santorum have not done theirs yet but Romney is the bad guy? Well as far as I know we have until April 15th to do our taxes so that's how long they could take.

[mrfairoaks]

11:33 AM on 01/21/2012

celeste5793 Waaa !

[Celeste5793]

11:44 AM on 01/21/2012

Waaa yourself!

[gatlinggun6]

08:12 PM on 01/21/2012

Celeste the American public are not interested in one year of tax returns. We are especially not interested in the tax returns of those who knew they were running for President, so their accountants could dress up their returns. No, what they American public want to see are their tax returns from those years when thy were not running for President.

For Mittens that means we want to see those tax returns from his time as CEO of Bain Capital. A time before he entered politics. That will tell us if he has speaking from both sides of his mouth.

[Celeste5793]

08:25 PM on 01/21/2012

You sound like a Newt voter to me. I don't believe someone like yourself was ever going to vote for Mitt Romney. He has to show the same tax returns that everyone else currently running shows, and since Newt showed one year, that is what he should show. Santorum and Paul have not done theirs yet either but nothing was said to them. Obama showed his in March of the year he ran for office not in January.

By the way tonight's vote in South Carolina puts to an end their lies about being evangelicals. You are not an evangelical person if you vote for a man with Newt's family values track record. What Newt played to this week was their bigotry and everyone else could see that.

[Joseph Sweet]

07:18 PM on 01/20/2012

If Mitt Romney really believed what he said about U.S. tax policy, then he would just release his tax records and be completely unapologetic about paying a low percentage of taxes and making a large amount of money on private equity deals. But he obviously finds something inherently wrong with the system or else he wouldn't be afraid to stand by it.

[MarcDel]

09:19 AM on 01/21/2012

I find his most disturbing comment that he doesn't want to release his taxes because he wants to beat Obama. He continually refers to concerns Obama will attack him if he releases them. If this isn't a full blown admission that his taxes and our tax policy is indefensible I don't know what is.

[Tom Airhart]

06:50 PM on 01/20/2012

Mitt doesn't want his constituents to know that he has been paying his taxes on the cheap be declaring a job as something else entirely. He pays 15% while the rest of us pay about 30 percent of our income or more in some instances. One more dishonest thing about Mitt Romney.

[MovieGuy2010]

06:48 PM on 01/20/2012

____________________________________
Admiral Farragut .60 Fans
Become a fan Unfan .inutes ago( 4:32 PM) This DEM hatefest has gone on long enough. Romney's holdings have been in a blind trust and all US taxes have been paid since before he was governor.
Google it.
____________________________________

http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romneys-blind-trust-not-blind-140241848.html

I want to repeat this, because a lot of people don't get how this works.

Faragutt is missing the point, Romney has paid US taxes ON THE INTEREST from the Fund, that is all he required to do, as it is parked offshore.

When you are a CEO, you get paid in stock. TILL you cash that stock in is NOT subject to full taxes AND if you don't sell it, you can use the Carry Forward loophole to not even pay the 15% but keep delaying it UNTIL YOU DO SELL IT.

If you never sell it, as Mitt has not done, YOU NEVER EVEN PAY THE 15%!

Get it, that is the secret that the rich get to play and you don't! Romney more then likely has not paid ANY US taxes on that money, except on the interest NOT the balance.

It is the reason Romney will do ANYTHING NOT to release his returns from more then 5 years ago. The returns that matter are not 2011 it is when he set up the Blind Trust and before....

[MovieGuy2010]

07:14 PM on 01/20/2012

Also, NOW do you understand why these people want to take the 15% capital gains and the Estate taxes to zero.

Because THEN Mitts kids would essentail inherit that fund TAX FREE and the money would never have been touched by US taxes.

Remember this "THE DEATH TAX IS A DOUBLE DIP, THE MONEY IS TAXED TWICE!

IF the rich have their way, the money will not even be taxed ONCE!

Taxes are for the little people, as Leona Hemsley said.

[red4182]

07:46 PM on 01/20/2012

Taxes on dividends are paid every year. Only taxes on the profit of the stock are paid the year sold. that profit can be carried over assuming it was a long term capital gain. If you get paid in stock you pay taxes on the value of the stock when you receive it. Then you pay taxes again on the profit when you sell it. If it goes down you sell at a loss, but you already paid full taxes. So you paid taxes on money you never got. Yes you can wright off losses but not for your full lose.

[MovieGuy2010]

04:23 PM on 01/21/2012

http://www.newsvideoclip.tv/cnnn-bbc-abc-breaking-news-chicago/

Yes, unless Bain paid him in one of the fund it set up in the Caymans?

If the stock is a Cayman Island Corp. you pay NO taxes on it.....Unless he sells it Then the US 15% carried interest tax would get him, but it delayed UNTIL HE SELLS IT....

The point is, the Cayman Accounts are black boxes....Mitt said, he followed THE TAX LAWS, but he doesn't say WHAT COUNTRIES Tax laws.

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/01/20/the-burden-of-romneys-tax-returns/

[MovieGuy2010]

06:04 PM on 01/20/2012

" I went off on my own. I didn't inherit money from my parents. What I have, I earned. I worked hard. The American way."

Wow, the guy wants to make himself sound like a Horatio Alger story?

Fact is, he is the son of rich man and he live a patrician life.

He went to private schools from 7th grade on. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, at the time, one of the richest neighborhoods in the country. He went to BYU, where his Father already had a building complex named after him. Then he went to Harvard and got a law and a business degree.

He did not come out of school with lots of student debt, you can be assured of that.

When he went to job interviews, want to bet how many DID NOT figure out he was the son of the former head of American Motors and Former Governor of Michigan?

SURE he decided NOT to go into the Auto business, but WHO DID at the that time?

He want where the money was, into finance and THEN he choose the most agressive form of financial game, Leveraged Buy-Outs.

Now, again, Liberals has no problem with rich patrician candidates, we elected and loved FDR and JFK.

But, they didn''t try to pretend to be some hard scrabble guys from the projects.

[Tom Airhart]

06:54 PM on 01/20/2012

But we Democrats also voted for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who came from poor beginnings unlike the likes of Eisenhower, Nixon Bush's 1 and 2. Clinton's mom was a divorced mother raising Bill Clinton with barely enough to scrape by on. Obama was even worse off and look. Both men successfully went through college, paid their student loans and graduated from law school with honors and rose to the highest office in the land; the President of the United States of America. An all American success story, unlike Mitt Romney

[Phoenix1944]

06:01 PM on 01/20/2012

I agree with Romney, there is nothing wrong with being successful, making money in one's investment, being a capitalist and with our free enterprise spirit. That's what our nation's economy is built on. It's just the methodology and principles he used that is questionable. If he wants to be our President, he must show some transparency, and begin with his tax returns. There is nothing wrong with being rich and earning >$374,000/annul for speaking fees, which is 'NOT MUCH' for his standards. I find little, if any, substance in him and the other GOP candidates. Romney is always evasive and ducks the difficult questions and has become good at it. Iowa was given to Romney. Intentionally? We will never know.
Our economy and job growth is getting back on track according to all economic indicators. Yes, it is going slow but steady, may not be fast enough for some of us. Eight years of mismanagement, poor judgment by the Bush/Cheney administration almost brought our proud, rich and powerful nation to it's knees. Ill advised fiscal policies lead to financial collapse. Hank Paulson the architect of bailout of the financial institutions and investment banks, made it worse. Of course, we need to cut spendig drastically, but also need to raise revenue to balance our budget and stop Bush tax cut for the wealthiest.
Our non partisans group will definately vote, but not Republican this time. A few have not made up their minds, but leaning towards Obama.

[Christopher Nagy]

05:09 PM on 01/20/2012

The Mittness Protection Program... priceless.

[MarcDel]

09:30 AM on 01/21/2012

I think it works better as a description of our tax laws and loopholes.........the interest forwarding loophole has no merit. It's a creation of lobbyists. No where else in the code do we say that money earned from work is treated as unearned investment income. Here the investor takes the risk, the likes of Romney do the work to invest it in ventures, yet they get to treat profits as though they didn't work but invested. Yeah this and other provisions are nothing more than a " mittness protection program".

[fumes]

05:05 PM on 01/20/2012

the tax return question..

seriously?

he didn't see that coming?

then he should stay away from propellers..

and The White House too!

[gene poole]

04:55 PM on 01/20/2012

What could this guy be hiding that he's willing to lose a bid for the presidency over?

[cico31]

05:08 PM on 01/20/2012

yet Obama did not disclose his for about 9 more weeks from now at this juncture 4 yrs. ago....

[Tired of the BULL]

05:11 PM on 01/20/2012

Obama didn't have millions stashed in the Caymans either. Personally I really don't care if he waits. It will only make more people think he is hiding something.

[MovieGuy2010]

06:10 PM on 01/20/2012

Yes, remember all the clamor for Obama's returns...Oh wait....

It was his competition on the right that asked for the returns. we on the left would be happy to wait for that nine weeks...

[zoiebear]

11:39 PM on 01/20/2012

plenty!!