Romney Paid Zero Taxes in the ’90’s

Filed in National by on August 6, 2012

Harry Reid is too cagey a politician to get dragged into a pissing match without the goods. Now the GOP has taken to their fainting couch over Reid’s assertions, but they can’t back up their side with anything other than cry-baby hissy fits, while the Democrats get to play the badasses for once.

The fact that story continues to back Romney into a deeper and deeper corner can be confirmed by the ever more desperate squeals from the GOP.

The war over Mitt Romney’s tax returns is getting more bitter by the moment, with a top aide to Senate Majority Harry Reid blasting Republicans as “cowards” and “henchmen” for their attacks on the Nevada Democrat.

“They’re a bunch of cowards and they’re avoiding the issue,” said David Krone, Reid’s chief of staff, in an interview with POLITICO on Sunday night. “Lindsey Graham, Reince Priebus – they’re a bunch of henchmen for Romney and they’re all reading off the same talking points. They couldn’t hold a candle to Harry Reid.”
Krone added: “What Harry Reid said is the fact of what he was told. To turn it around, all their childish rants this weekend about calling Reid a ‘liar’ and all that, it just shows you how scared they are that Harry Reid was telling the truth.”

Krone’s comments are the latest round in what has becoming an increasingly bitter – and personal fight – between Reid, Romney and Republicans over Reid’s assertion that Romney has not paid taxes for the decade.
Reid first made the charge in an interview with the Huffington Post on Tuesday, saying he was told this by an as-yet-unidentified investor in Bain Capital, the investment fund that Romney co-founded in 1984. Reid later repeated the claim on the Senate floor, infuriating the Romney campaign and GOP senators.
Krone said he knows the identity of who told this to Reid, describing the source as a “Bain investor” and “prominent, successful businessman,” but the Reid camp has declined to name the person.

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Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (21)

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  1. chlorophil says:

    I don’t know. I think it’s a little beneath the Senate Majority Leader to be throwing out hearsay attacks like this. Of course, if he is wrong he’ll hide behind the old, “I never said he didn’t pay taxes. I said I was told he hadn’t paid any taxes.” I think the onus is on Harry Reid to back up what he’s said.

  2. Dave says:

    Once upon a time, most of the members of Congress were statesmen (statespersons). No one would have ever thought to call the President a liar out loud at a State of the Union address. Now they’ve become what we apparently demand they be. Invectives, accusations, mischaracterizations, and labeling are all used in an attempt to cast others in an unfavorable light. Where once both parties worked together to find and achieve common objectives. Today, it’s open warfare, where anything goes. The result is pretty much gridlock and brinkmanship. Civility and class are gone. Never to return.

  3. puck says:

    Dave, Democrats were getting hammered year after year because they weren’t fighting fire with fire. But now, for some reason the prospect of losing the Presidential election this year seems to have concentrated their attention.

    Lord knows I wish they had gotten this fired up for the health care and tax bills, and for the mid-term elections themselves. But better late than never. Now they are finally fighting back and it feels good.

    Republicans aren’t bemoaning the loss of civility. They are just shocked to find themselves on the losing end of it.

  4. Dave says:

    True, Republicans are not bemoaning the loss of civility. The fact is they are the primary cause of the loss of it. I just wish it didn’t have be that way. That we did not have open warfare. The nation suffers. The last time I recall two sides trying to work together was the Kennedy McCain Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act in 2007 and where did that get them? Five years later, we still have done nothing on immigration reform. It’s kinda disheartening.

  5. puck says:

    There has always been name-calling in politics. What’s new is the Big Lie politics. It used to be that when a politician got called out on a lie, he’d stop telling the lie. Now Republicans repeat it even after it is debunked, knowing that voters will believe it.

    “There you go again.”
    “Cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget.”
    “Tax cuts pay for themselves.”
    Half of all Americans don’t know Obama’s religion or where he was born.

    These are all Republican Big Lies that have been debunked, not just academically but in real life. Yet Republicans have been repeating them and winning elections on them for thirty years. Why is that?

    Now, I don’t see Democrats using the Big Lie like that. Maybe Reid took a little dip of it by claiming Romney paid no taxes, maybe not. But even if it’s not true, Republicans had it coming. Bravo, Harry.

    If the returns ever come out and Romney paid one nickel of tax, you know the issue will become Reid, not Romney.

  6. puck says:

    The last time I recall the two sides working together was when they passed the bipartisan extension of the Bush tax cuts in 2010. Working together isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  7. Jason330 says:

    “(I wish) that we did not have open warfare. The nation suffers.”

    This is hogwash. The nation suffers when Democrats don’t defend the middle class from the Republicans. The nation suffered through far too much political comity.

  8. Delaware Dem says:

    Exactly. To all those who bemoan the loss of civility in politics let me tell you something. If there ever was any civility in politics it was an allusion or an aberration brought on by the Cold War when the nation was pretty united on foreign policy and the Republican Party accepted the New Deal in the 1950’s. Civility in politics ended in the 1980’s, pretty much the same time the Soviet Union fell, and when the Republican Party decided that it was time to end the New Deal.

    Remember, politics was a brutal nasty business in the 1700’s (ask Adams and Jefferson about civility in politics), in the 1800’s (there were actual gun fights on the floor of the Senate, an actual Civil War), and the 1900’s before WWII and the Depression.

    So if you want civility in politics as a goal itself, then really, you stand for nothing. Because if you have as a principle defending Social Security, universal healthcare, and choice, then sometimes you have to fight for it, and sometimes you have to do it uncivilly. You can’t say, “gee, I would really like to save Social Security, but gosh darn it, it would offend the Republicans, so I am going to just sit in that corner over there.”

    FUCK THAT.

    You either fight, or you can go home.

  9. fightingbluehen says:

    I’m sure whatever tax strategies Romney used are legal and probably done by many other esteemed members of our elected body of government . That’s why these accusations will never be the silver bullet that the Democrats are looking for.

  10. Liberal Elite says:

    I’m guessing that the shoe will drop after the GOP convention, when the GOP is stuck with that creep.

    The best stuff about Romney is yet to come out… and it will.

  11. Jason330 says:

    I soooo love that Romney is left with…”whatever tax strategies Romney used are legal.”

    When it comes out that Romney paid 8%, or 4% or 0%.. and he defends it with, “but, but, but… it was legal.”

    I will laugh my ass off, because the election will be a done deal.

  12. Delaware Dem says:

    The election is already a done deal. It is just a question of margins now.

  13. pandora says:

    Republicans are always outraged when Dems refuse to fight with one arm tied behind their back.

    The beauty of what Reid did is: The power to disprove the story lies entirely in Romney’s hands.

    You’d think the last thing the Romney campaign wants to be talking about is Romney’s taxes. And here we are, still talking about them because Romney refuses to release them.

    Looks like the Romney campaign has decided that releasing those tax returns is more damaging than not releasing them.

  14. marge says:

    “The power to disprove the story lies entirely in Romney’s hands”

    Do we really want this to be the new paradigm? Every accusation is true until you disprove it?

  15. Jason330 says:

    Harry Reid has the goods, or he wouldn’t go there. Reid, a Mormon well respected in his church, is no Tom Delay. Only Romney has the power to make this story go away. (Except he doesn’t because the truth would be too damaging.)

  16. cassandra_m says:

    If you are a Democrat in the sights of the GOP that already *is* the paradigm.

    Romney is the only one with the access to the truth on this thing. Why shouldn’t he be asked to demonstrate it?

    Besides this is less about the truth of whether or not he paid taxes and is more about showing people how shady and untrustworthy he is.

  17. SussexWatcher says:

    “Do we really want this to be the new paradigm? Every accusation is true until you disprove it?”

    That’s the same system the birthers use, so, yeah, sure.

  18. heragain says:

    Everyone IS aware that he lied about his residency and had to file amended taxes to qualify for running in Massachusetts, right? The globe called him on it. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2002/06/07/romney-says-didn-file-mass-resident/cxg3maVKXTA0iIuekT4QPO/story.html

    Personally, I’m DYING to see those tax returns. I enjoyed Sarah Palin’s emails, too.

  19. puck says:

    “I’m sure whatever tax strategies Romney used are legal and probably done by many other esteemed members of our elected body of government . ”

    Which is why, if those strategies come to light in the glare of a Presidential election, it will put “tax reform” in a whole new light.

    Plus, after the whole birther thing, Republicans deserve no quarter.

  20. Jason330 says:

    Republicans are confused by the fact that this is in its second day and Reid hasn’t issued an apology yet.

    Suck it dingle berries!

    Reid wasn’t fazed. His spokesman Adam Jentleson responded in the afternoon by vouching for the credibility of the source and inviting Romney to disprove the claim by releasing a series of tax returns. Calling him the “most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon,” Jentleson told TPM: “It’s clear Mitt Romney is hiding something, and the only way for him to clear this up is to be straight with the American people and release his tax returns.”

  21. anonymous says:

    Oh, Mr. Big Stuff. Will you please level with Americans and tell them who you really are?

    No. Because then, he’s never going to get your votes.

    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/01/23/2007-video-mitt-romneys-hypocrisy-on-iran-investments-we-cant-have-ethical-standards-that-are-a-punch-line-for-jay-leno/

    This heartless, soulless republican entity, Rmoney, keeps saying, ‘corporations are people.”
    But natural people know, corporations aren’t people; corporations are corporations.
    Could it be, could it be, Corporate Rmoney wants to be President of the United Corporations of America?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A

    Rmoney needs to tell the truth
    about how he (and other multi millionaires, billionaire corporations) make and hold onto all that money.

    Rmoney needs to tell the truth about the costs to mankind,
    when petroleum and petrochemical industries ignore the costs of climate change ‘denial.’

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMAn6O1IeoQ

    Rmoney needs to admit, “corporations are {not} people,” but that some people operate like heartless, soulless corporations.

    Don’t expect that Rmoney will tell the American people, who he really is.

    Rmoney became the republican candidate because
    he’s willing to maximize corporate financial gains,
    not matter how shamelessly he has to ‘contradict’ himself and
    no matter what the consequences will be, to the American people.

    What Americans are hearing from Rmoney, are the ‘lies’ powerful corporations want told and enacted into law.

    Rmoney is showing his millionaire, billionaire corporate CPAC contributors, he will withhold, misrepresent and contradict any position, in order to bring corporate control into the White House.

    In fact, Willard Rmoney has stated, (and this may be his only core truth,)

    “Under the Romney Administration the US will have an ‘Official Policy of Denial.’

    Definition of Denial: 1. A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request 2. A refusal to grant the truth of a statement or allegation;
    A contradiction.

    Rmoney’s ‘Policy of Denial’ is a policy polluting corporations love. What a multi billion dollar corporate gift that is.
    However, Rmoney’s isn’t telling the voters that industrial de regulation means the costs will be paid by the poor, middle, upper middle class people. Take climate change for example. It’s already killing people, melting polar ice, acidifying the oceans, drying and burning forests, destroying homes, destroying crops, rising food prices, causing melting permafrost to release methane gas into the atmosphere, etc.

    Yet Rmoney’s spokeswoman said, “Romney does NOT think greenhouse gases are pollutants within the meaning of the Clean Air Act, and he does NOT believe that the EPA should be regulating them.”
    Only a ‘corporation’ would say that. A corporation would want to hide blamelessly behind an ‘Official Policy of Denial.’ A ‘person,’ on the other hand, would listen to 99.9% of legitimate climate scientist worldwide. A person would know, people around the world are being harmed, the global climate is changing and that CO2 must be regulated.

    Seems ‘denial’ has gone from corporate fossil fuel ‘skeptics’ to an attempt to bring an “Official Policy of Denial,” into the White House.

    When Rmoney said, ‘corporations are people,’ he is really saying, corporations are the heartless, soulless corporate entities he aims to serve and protect. It just sounds better, when you call them ‘people.’

    http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/12399218-the-hidden-dangers-of-the-2012-republican-party-and-citizens-united?clear_cache=true

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/28/1113838/-Romney-s-Iranian-Oil-Investments-Loom-During-Visit-To-Israel

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no8zxGPyapU&feature=related