“You’re Not Just A Chump”: Mitt Romney Thinks You’re A Sucker
You don’t have accounts in the Caymans? What a chump.
Back in January, when he was asked during a primary debate about the taxes he pays, Mitt Romney made the somewhat odd assertion that “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.” As I’ve written before, this would seem to indicate that Romney believes that if you don’t have a team of accountants who can ferret out every last loophole to minimize your tax bill then you’re just a sucker, so pathetic that you are unworthy of occupying the highest office in the land. But maybe I was being unfair. After all, I’ve been critical of the campaign habit of reading too much into any particular statement a candidate makes. We all say things that upon reflection we’d like to put another way or take back completely, so maybe Romney didn’t quite mean it the way it sounded.
But once you repeat a statement like that more than once, we can be pretty sure you do in fact mean it. And based on what he said in an interview yesterday with ABC News, we can be pretty sure Mitt Romney genuinely believes that if you paid an extra dollar to the federal government, then you’re not just a chump, you’re such a chump we wouldn’t want you to be president:
From time to time I’ve been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares my taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. I don’t pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president. I’d think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.
Think about this for a moment. Romney thinks that paying more than you owed, or even failing to take advantage of every last loophole and tax shelter you could, is so despicable it’s disqualifying, as though it were a moral transgression on par with, I don’t know, stealing a car or abusing your wife or something.
Not only that, both times he has said this he projects the belief onto other people as well. “I don’t think you want someone” the first time, “I’d think people would want me” this time. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say this has its roots in Romney’s time in the private equity world. If you’re investing with a private equity firm, you want the leader of that firm to be smart, thorough, and ruthless. You want him to squeeze every last penny he can from every available source, and of course minimize the taxes he and you will pay. If he says, “I could have set up an elaborate network of shell companies in the Caribbean, but I decided not to,” you might think he had failed you, since the only goal in the endeavor is to make as much money as possible and keep the government’s hands off it.
But the presidency isn’t the chairmanship of a private equity firm, and maybe, just maybe, the qualities that make one effective at the latter aren’t precisely the qualities we want in the former.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the real issue is that we have a tax system that allows people like Mitt Romney, who takes in about $20 million a year despite the fact that he hasn’t actually held a job in five years other than running for president, to pay a laughably low tax rate, while people who actually work for a living pay a far higher proportion of their income in taxes. Weirdly, Romney thinks that system is just peachy, and he would actually like to tilt it even farther in favor of the wealthy.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 30, 2012
“Absentee Owner”: New Bain Questions To Dog Romney And They Are Not About Seamus
Though much of the nation’s attention has shifted to the tragic overnight violence in Aurora, Colorado, the political world will apparently move forward. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had already scheduled a campaign event in New Hampshire, and his staff alerted reporters this morning that their plans have not changed.
With that in mind, there are new questions about the candidate’s controversial private-sector background that deserve answers. The Boston Globe has this new report, for example, noting Romney’s ongoing ties to Bain Capital after his departure in February 1999.
Interviews with a half-dozen of Romney’s former partners and associates, as well as public records, show that he was not merely an absentee owner during this period. He signed dozens of company documents, including filings with regulators on a vast array of Bain’s investment entities. And he drove the complex negotiations over his own large severance package, a deal that was critical to the firm’s future without him, according to his former associates.
Indeed, by remaining CEO and sole shareholder, Romney held on to his leverage in the talks that resulted in his generous 10-year retirement package, according to former associates.
“The elephant in the room was not whether Mitt was involved in investment decisions but Mitt’s retention of control of the firm and therefore his ability to extract a huge economic benefit by delaying his giving up of that control,” said one former associate.
So, on the one hand, we see Mitt Romney telling voters, “I was in Utah full time. I had no responsibility for management at Bain Capital.” On the other hand, we see evidence that Romney was not in Utah full time and had quite a few responsibilities for management of Bain Capital.
In the meantime, David Corn has a new report on Bain, during Romney’s tenure, investing millions in a pair of companies that specialized in outsourcing high-tech manufacturing.
As for the still-hidden tax returns, the number of Republicans urging Romney to disclose more materials continues to grow.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 20, 2012
“You Want To See Big Government”: The Insanity Of The Socialism Talk
Kevin Drum notes today that all the overheated Republican rhetoric about the president’s tax proposal, suggesting capitalism is on the very edge of disappearing, is a bout of hysteria over a relatively small amount of money for the wealthy:
I just want everyone to be absolutely clear on what this “narrative of aggrievement” is all about. It’s about Obama’s proposal that the marginal tax rate on income over $400,000 should rise from 35% to 39.6%.
That’s your aggrievement. That’s your entitlement. That’s your socialism. That’s your class warfare. An increase in the top marginal tax rate of 4.6 percentage points.
Four. Point. Six.
This is what America’s most prosperous citizens are up in arms about. This is why Barack Obama is an enemy of capitalism. These are the spiteful shackles he proposes to use to subjugate America’s engines of job creation. It’s the reason America’s wealthiest citizens are so frightened about the future of their country.
4.6 percentage points. Just let that sink in.
Add in the fact that Obama is simply trying to restore the top tax rate under which the most rapid accumulation of private wealth in human history–in the late 1990s–occurred, and the insanity of the “socialism” talk becomes especially apparent.
Look, folks, I’m not that old, and I can remember the time a Republican president unilaterally created a policy that was vastly more disruptive of the private-sector economy than anything Barack Obama has even dreamed of: Richard Nixon’s imposition of wage and price controls in 1971. Top tax rates were much higher then, too. Somehow or other, liberty survived.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 13, 2012
“Blind Trusts Don’t Seem So Blind”: Where And How Does Mitt Romney Hide His Money?
Mitt Romney never wanted to release his tax returns. He refused disclosure in 1994 during his unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid, in 2002 when he won election as Governor of Massachusetts, and in his failed 2008 attempt to gain the Republican nomination for President. Last January Romney finally released his 2010 tax return and an estimate for 2011 after constant badgering by his Republican primary rivals.
Those documents revealed his offshore bank accounts and his tax rate, just shy of 15 percent, or less than what most middle-class Americans pay, despite his estimated worth of up to $250 million. As the Washington Post reported: “By offering a limited description of his assets, Romney has made it difficult to know precisely where his money is invested, whether it is offshore or in controversial companies, or whether those holdings could affect his policies or present any conflicts of interest.” Now journalist and author Nicholas Shaxson digs deeper in a new investigation published by Vanity Fair.
According to Shaxson, Romney is using every possible loophole to avoid paying more taxes. He takes his payments from Bain Capital as investment income, allowing him to pay at a rate much lower than the 35 percent he would owe if he had earned an “ordinary income” of salaries and wages.
But as Shaxson also points out, nobody even knows how much Romney should pay because nobody knows what his offshore accounts actually hold. He maintains accounts and entities not only in Switzerland, but in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands as well.
Consider the example of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., a Bermuda-based corporation set up by Romney in 1997. This entity wasn’t even disclosed in financial documents until 2010, and upon examining that return, Shaxon writes: “We have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates.” Furthermore, Bain Capital holds at least 138 funds in the Cayman Islands, with Romney having personal interests in at least 12 that are worth as much as $30 million. The Romney campaign has stated that his taxes would not be affected even if he included these interests, but there’s no way to confirm this because everything is hidden behind confidentiality laws.
Equally intriguing are the Romneys’ blind trusts, designed, as Shaxon explains, “to avoid conflicts of interest for those in public office by having politicians’ assets managed by independent trustees.” But in Romney’s case, the blind trusts don’t seem so blind. Their personal lawyer, Bradford Malt, was appointed to be the trustee, and in 2010, the Romneys invested $10 million in Solamere Founders Fund, which was founded by their son Tagg and former campaign fundraiser Spencer Zwick.
Shaxson also asks whether Romney used “blocker corporations” in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere to escape paying taxes on his retirement account, which is estimated to contain as much as $102 million. Offshore blocker corporations are used to avoid the Unrelated Business Income Tax.
The Obama campaign has hit Romney’s financial holdings hard in ads – and even created a world map showing the overseas locations where the Republican candidate holds accounts. Other Democrats have joined this line of attack. In an interview with The Huffington Post, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland asserted, “Why would any person who aspired to be president, as Mitt Romney has for probably much of his life, open a Swiss bank account? What does that say about his political judgment and what does it say about his commitment to the United States of America?”
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin adds that there are only two reasons why one would want to hold a Swiss bank account: “Number one, you believe the Swiss franc is a stronger currency than the United States dollar. And that apparently was the decision the Romney family made during the Bush presidency.”
“And secondly, you want to hide something, you want to conceal something,” he said. “It is impossible for him to explain or defend owning a Swiss bank account.”
With Shaxson’s revealing piece, speculation over Romney’s handling of his money will no doubt continue. If the Romney campaign wants everyone to stop questioning his tax returns and offshore accounts, why not just disclose all of the information, as his father George Romney did during his own 1968 presidential run?
By: Lynn Zhong, The National Memo, July 4, 2012
“Leaving Bush Behind Elevator Doors”: Mitt Romney Throws “Air Kiss To Bill Clinton”
Mitt Romney was against Bill Clinton before he was for him.
There was Romney, campaigning Tuesday in Iowa, praising the nation’s previous Democratic president and casting him as far superior to the current incumbent.
“Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the era of big government was over,” Romney declared. “Clinton was signaling to his own party that Democrats should no longer try to govern by proposing a new program for every problem.” President Obama, he said, “tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas.”
So you might assume that Romney likes Clinton. But that would be wrong. Scrambling during the GOP primaries this year to explain why he had voted in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary for the late Sen. Paul Tsongas, Romney invoked that old GOP standby: Clinton hatred.
“In my state of Massachusetts, you could register as an independent and go vote in [whichever] primary happens to be very interesting,” Romney averred. “And any chance I got to vote against Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, I took.”
Now, strictly speaking, I suppose that Romney can praise Clinton now while once having voted against him. Or he can claim that, while he prefers Clinton to Obama, he preferred Tsongas to Clinton. That so much of what Romney says requires such careful parsing suggests how little he feels bound by anything he has said in the past. For Romney, every day is a blank slate. Consistency, he seems to think, is the hobgoblin of losing campaigns.
There is more here than casual flip-flopping. Romney says he likes Clinton’s view of government better than Obama’s. And it’s true that government’s share of the economy grew under Obama because he inherited a downturn and baby boomers got older.
But what about taxes? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, government receipts as a share of gross domestic product rose from 17.5 percent in 1992, the year Clinton was elected, to 20.6 percent in 2000, his last full year in office. By contrast, government receipts as a share of GDP were just 15.4 percent in 2011. Which numbers make Romney happier?
The top income tax rate under Clinton, for incomes over $250,000, was 39.6 percent. Obama wants to go back to the Clinton rate. Romney wants to cut the top rate from its current 35 percent to 28 percent. Who is Clinton’s real heir?
And Obama would not restore all of the Clinton tax rates. He wants to raise only the top one. In principle, Obama favors lower taxes on middle-income Americans than Clinton did. By this measure, Obama is less “pro-government” than Clinton.
You can make the same case on health care. The law that Obama signed in 2010 is less adventurous and less government-oriented than the health plan Clinton proposed in the early 1990s. Obama’s law is based on many Republican ideas, including the individual mandate that Romney supported as governor of Massachusetts. Clinton, to the consternation of conservatives, was for a mandate on businesses.
It’s revealing that Romney made his pro-Clinton comments the same day that — speaking to reporters as elevator doors were closing on him — former president George W. Bush announced, “I’m for Mitt Romney.” Funny that Romney made a bigger deal about Clinton than about that Bush endorsement. Yet Republicans, including Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), categorically reject the lessons that Clinton taught.
When Clinton raised the top tax rate, without a single Republican vote, supply-side conservatives howled that asking a little more from the wealthy would tank the economy. It did nothing of the sort. After Clinton’s tax increase, the economy roared, deficits turned into surpluses and the empathetic guy from Arkansas, despite certain well-known difficulties, earned the long-term affection of the American people. On the other hand, polls show that Bush, who pursued policies Republicans are proposing more of now, is remembered less fondly. Romney would prefer to leave Bush behind the elevator doors.
For the rest of this campaign, count on Republicans to tout Clinton as more pro-business than Obama and to do all they can to separate our current president from the best parts of Clinton’s legacy. Yes, many business folks who initially resented Clinton’s tax increases came to appreciate the economic boom that followed. But whose approach to government, budgets and taxes more closely resembles Clinton’s? Here’s a hint: It’s not the guy who went out of his way to vote against Clinton in 1992.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr. Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, May 16, 2012
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