“Dirty Liar Harry”: Republicans Have Just About Had It With Harry Reid On Romney’s Tax Return Story
Good afternoon: It’s Sunday, August 5th, 2012, and Mitt Romney has still not released more than two-years’ worth of tax returns. Why is that? Only Mitt and Rafalca know for sure. The rest of us poor souls must continue to sit here and speculate, potentially forever. As you are perhaps aware, Harry Reid has floated one improbable explanation for the secrecy surrounding the documents, which is that Romney did not pay taxes for a decade. The candidate has, of course, denied this, but Reid keeps pushing back, forcing Romney’s surrogates to attack him and thereby ensuring that the story — and the general tax return theme — remain in the news.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus got particularly feisty on ABC’s This Week, calling Reid a “dirty liar who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself, complains about people with money but lives in the Ritz Carlton here down the street.” Senator Lindsey Graham called Reid’s accusations “out of bounds,” while Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said they were “reckless and slanderous.” McDonnell added that, “People don’t care about Mitt Romney’s tax returns. They are [worried] about their own tax returns,” which would probably be mostly true in a world in which Mitt Romney had released more tax returns.
Meanwhile, the Democrats did their best to contain their glee over the situation, with varying degrees of success. Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell gently peer pressured Romney to share his filings, saying, “We all do it. It’s become commonplace in American politics…Mitt, go ahead and do it.” Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs suggested that Romney “go to Kinko’s,” where he could “put this to rest” by making copies of the documents for “a nickel a page.” (Gibbs was nice enough to offer to send him the nickels.):
“The whole world would know exactly what loopholes he’s taking advantage of,” alluding to Romney’s having placed some of his money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
Asked repeatedly whether the Obama campaign in Chicago had told Reid to stop making those tax claims, Gibbs would only reply: “I don’t think anybody controls Harry Reid.
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wassermann Schultz was more subdued: “This question is not just generated by Harry Reid,” she said. “It’s been asked by countless reporters, by voters that want to know more about Mitt Romney’s finances.” And David Axelrod stuck to what has become an Obama campaign mantra, asking, “Why don’t they just put this to rest? What is it that he’s hiding?”
Finally, Reid himself weighed in once again via a statement sent to Talking Points Memo this morning which read, in part, “It is sad that the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon has forced his party to defend his decision to hide the truth about his tax returns.” Sad is one word for it.
By: Caroline Bankoff, Daily Intel, August 5, 2012
“A Blatant Attempt To Mislead”: Romney Falsely Accuses Obama Campaign Of Trying To Restrict Military Voting Rights
Mitt Romney attacked a lawsuit brought by President Obama’s campaign seeking the restoration of early voting rights for Ohio voters by falsely implying that Obama is trying to take away the early voting privileges for members of the military.
“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage,” Romney said in a statement Saturday.
Actually, the Obama campaign’s lawsuit, filed by the campaign in mid-July, explicitly asks a federal court to restore in-person early voting rights to all eligible Ohio voters on the three days preceding Election Day.
The suit does not seek to prevent members of the military from voting in person during that period, rather it seeks to force Ohio to give other voters (including, for instance, cops and firefighters) the same opportunity to vote.
Romney said in the statement that as president he would “work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.” He said that members of the military “make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote.”
The Romney campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TPM on whether he believes cops and firefighters should also be allowed to vote in the three days before the election.
Obama’s campaign is fighting back, calling Romney’s statement a “blatant attempt to mislead” voters.
“This lawsuit seeks to treat all Ohio citizens equally under the law,” Obama for America attorney Bob Bauer said in a statement. “We want to restore the right of all to vote before Election Day.”
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has filed 10 lawsuits and reached nine settlements with various states to protect military voters under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).
Late update: Obama for America Veterans and Military Family Vote Director Rob Diamond issued this statement:
“Mitt Romney and his campaign have completely fabricated a claim that the Obama campaign is trying to restrict military voting in Ohio. In fact, the opposite is true: the Obama campaign filed a lawsuit to make sure every Ohioan, including military members and their families, has early voting rights over the last weekend prior to the election. The case filed with the court could not be clearer on this point. The real story of what is happening in the Buckeye State is that Mitt Romney supports the Republican effort to stop people from voting by restricting their access to the polls. In 2008, more than 93,000 Ohioans utilized early voting in the three days before the election. In complete disregard of the will of Ohio voters expressed last year through the referendum process, the Republican legislature is attempting to remove from the vast majority of voters — including veterans of our armed services — the early voting rights they enjoyed in 2008. This latest Republican attack on rights of voters is shameful — and so is Mitt Romney’s endorsement of it.”
By: Ryan J. Reilly, Talking Points Memo, August 4, 2012
“Circumstantial Evidence”: Harry Reid Gets Under Mitt Romney’s Skin
Harry Reid has always been an unusual character. He’s often dismissed as a lightweight by Republicans (Senator Tom Coburn recently called him “incompetent and incapable”), but he is also an adept legislative maneuverer who has notched some extraordinary victories, perhaps none more notable than getting every Democrat in the Senate, even ones like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman who live to make trouble for their own party, to vote for the Affordable Care Act. He’s very soft-spoken, speaking most of the time in a near-whisper, but he’s also willing to wield a shiv with an enthusiasm few in his party can muster.
And now, Reid is doing the kind of work that surrogates are supposed to do for presidential candidates: go out and make the kind of biting, maybe even questionable attack on the opponent that the candidate himself doesn’t want to be seen making. Reid has charged that a source at Bain Capital has told him privately that Mitt Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years, and that’s why Romney won’t reveal his tax returns. When asked for concrete evidence beyond the word of an anonymous source, Reid says, “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn’t he release his tax returns?” Romney replied that Reid should “put up or shut up,” and offered an unsubstantiated charge of his own: “I’m looking forward to having Harry reveal his sources and we’ll probably find out it’s the White House.”
This episode gives us yet another case study in how different Republicans and Democrats are. If the parties were reversed, I guarantee you that you would not be able to find a single Republican to criticize what their colleague was doing. They’d meet the “McCarthyism!” charges with a laugh. But Democrats are conflicted, as they usually are about hardball politics (Jon Stewart tore Reid a new one over it). So let’s take a moment to sort through just how we should feel about this.
As a general principle, people shouldn’t toss around explosive charges without having evidence to back them up. And everyone is assuming that what Reid is saying is false, but there is at least some possibility that it’s true. It’s highly unlikely, but it’s possible. We can probably also assume that Reid didn’t make this up out of whole cloth—somebody did tell him this, though whether the person ought to be believed is something we can’t know.
Is this really akin to the birther controversy, as some have charged? It might be, if Romney had already released his tax returns and everyone knew what was in them. Remember that Obama released his birth certificate during the 2008 campaign, not to mention the fact that there were birth announcements in Hawaii newspapers. There was never any question but that the birthers were nuts, and Obama was never hiding anything. In this case, however, Romney is hiding something. His argument is that even though he will certainly demand to see multiple years of tax returns for his nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, and even though he’s certainly demanding to see multiple years of tax returns for the people he’s considering to be his running mate, the public doesn’t get to see his tax returns for more than one year. The absolute gall of his position—that he wants to be president of the United States, but doesn’t think he should have to give a full accounting of his finances—is really something to marvel at.
So just like it’s possible for the police to frame a guilty man, Reid is making what’s probably a false charge about a matter that Romney is improperly concealing from the electorate. If Romney wanted to, he could refute the charge and humiliate Reid tomorrow, just by releasing his returns. But it’s obvious that those returns contain something (or maybe multiple somethings) that Romney believes would be so damaging to his candidacy if voters knew about it that he’s willing to suffer all this bad press, and give the Obama campaign all this ammunition, to keep anyone from finding out.
And frankly, Mitt Romney has run his campaign in a manner so disreputable—constantly questioning Barack Obama’s patriotism, twisting his words out of context at every opportunity, running up a record of mendacity that stands out even among modern campaigns—that it’s hard to feel any sympathy for him when someone hits him a little below the belt.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 3, 2012
“Benjamin Franklin Would Gag Today”: If Congress Can’t Fix The Postal Service, It Can’t Fix Anything
Most Americans know that the U.S. Postal Service is a mess. What they also ought to know is that Congress is largely responsible for this once-competent institution’s bad rap.
This is the same Congress that is going to have to bring Medicare back from the brink of insolvency, find a way to fund Social Security as it becomes top-heavy with retired baby boomers, and pay down trillions in federal debt without short-circuiting the whole economy. Compared with all that, fixing the Postal Service is easy. Yet Congress dithers, cultivates decline and allows festering problems to become worse.
The Postal Service has been making headlines again because it just defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury to fund healthcare costs for future retirees. Another such default is likely at the end of September. The details are technical and boring, and for now, the mail will still show up in the mailbox. So the members of Congress perpetrating the default—mostly House Republicans—act like it’s no big deal.
But it is a big deal because the recalcitrance of political leaders shows an alarming willingness to dismantle the basic machinery of the economy. The Postal Service isn’t some dispensable outpost doing research on cow pies or freshmen mating habits. It’s an elemental part of the government that has been around since before the Constitution. Benjamin Franklin, the seminal American, was the first Postmaster General. He’d gag at today’s handling of the Postal Service.
Here’s the basic background: In 1971, Congress reorganized the USPS as an independent agency that’s supposed to pay for its operations through stamp sales and other forms of revenue, like a normal company. But the catch is that Congress still holds sway over strategic decisions, and most Postal Service employees are treated as members of the federal workforce. So at best, the Postal Service is a hybrid organization that’s as vulnerable as ever to political meddling.
That’s what is holding up reform plans now. The Postal Service itself has detailed a plan to eliminate Saturday delivery, consolidate processing centers, close underperforming post offices and make other cuts to adapt to a technology-driven economy that is obviously less dependent on physical mail delivery than in the past. Hundreds of regular companies have changed their business models and made similar adjustments to survive. Those that didn’t—Eastman Kodak, Borders, Lehman Brothers—paid a brutal price.
The Senate has even passed a bill that would fix some of the Postal Service’s problems and buy time to sort out others. That brings us to the House, where sensible legislation goes to die. There is a House bill meant to fix the Postal Service, but House leaders won’t bring it up for a vote. Nor will they vote on the Senate bill. House leaders like Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t say why, exactly.
Most likely, there’s not enough support in the House to pass any bill, so holding a vote would be an embarrassing setback for the GOP leadership. Opposition to reform seems to come from some usual suspects, such as rural lawmakers who don’t want postal facilities in their districts closed. Others (including Republicans) object to provisions that would allow the Postal Service more freedom to lay off unionized postal workers. Then there are Tea Party types who would prefer to privatize the agency, or who seemingly want to starve it of cash, so that … well, it’s not clear what purpose that would serve. What makes this standoff infuriating is that there are plenty of proposed solutions, including studies by at least three well-known consulting firms that execute corporate turnarounds for a living. There’s no need for further analysis, there’s only a need to make a decision and do something.
But the problem can be put off for a little longer, even if that makes the ultimate solution more expensive and encourages big mailers like Amazon and other retailers to look for other delivery choices. So Congress does less than the bare minimum and the Postal Service drifts toward ruination. Maybe the House will get to it in the fall, after their customary six-week August vacation. Maybe next spring. Maybe never, in order to show those impudent postal employees and their arrogant customers who’s really in charge around here.
Meanwhile, at the end of this year, Congress needs to come up with a deft way to forestall billions in tax hikes and spending cuts that will induce another recession if allowed to fully go into effect. By early next year, it will have to come up with a way to extend the government’s borrowing limit while also weaning Washington off its desperate borrowing habit. Then come some huge decisions about how to reform Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the long-term defense budget. If the handling of the Postal Service is any indication, we all ought to be terrified.
By: Rick Newman, U. S. News and World Report, August 1, 2012
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