Top Democrats Slam Romney’s Tax Sheltered Millions
Democrats went on the attack on Sunday after a Vanity Fair expose came out over the weekend investigating Mitt Romney’s Swiss bank accounts and his many different accounts held in offshore tax havens. The expose even went as far as to examine Romney’s creation of shell corporations which exist just to shelter offshore wealth.
Senator Dick Durbin said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“He is the first and only candidate for U.S. president with a Swiss bank account, with tax shelters. There is just no way to explain it.”
Romney has closed his Swiss bank account and straightened out most of his overseas accounts also but Republicans are having a hard time explaining why Romney felt he needed to put a considerable amount of his vast fortune in offshore tax-havens. Romney does insist he pad every bit of taxes on his wealth.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, also appearing on “Face the Nation,” decided to pass on addressing Romney’s accounts and instead focused on criticizing President Obama’s economic record. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal tried to flip around criticism of Romney by showing that his vast wealth was a result of success in business.
Jindal said,
“In terms of Governor Romney’s financial success. I’m happy that he’s a successful businessman.”
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, appearing with Jindal, went after Romney on the subject over and over saying,
“Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda, which, by the way, in order to avoid disclosure, he put in his wife’s name right before he became governor of Massachusetts.”
The article says we may never know how much money Romney has stashed in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland. There is a reason people choose these ultra secretive havens, to avoid the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chairwoman of the Democratic National Campaign Committee said,
“I’d really like to see Mitt Romney release more than one year of tax records because there’s been disturbing reports recently that he’s got a … secretive Bermuda corporation that no one knows anything about, investment in the Caymans. Americans need to ask themselves: why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account, and secretive investments like that?”
The Romney campaign responded in an e-mail to the Huffington Post,
“Mitt Romney had a successful career in the private sector, pays every dime of taxes he owes, has given generously to charitable organizations, and served numerous causes greater than himself,”
