Sen. Durbin: Romney running away from Bain ‘like a scalded cat’

Durbin said Romney could clear questions about his tenure at Bain "this afternoon" by releasing more tax records.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Sunday said GOP presidential Mitt Romney candidate is running away from his ties to private equity firm Bain Capital "like a scalded cat."

Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate and key ally of President Obama said Romney could clear up controversy surrounding his tenure at Bain "this afternoon" by releasing more tax information.

"We need to get down to the bottom of why…is Mitt Romney running away from his company, Bain Capital, like a scaled cat," Durbin said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Because there is evidence that under Bain Capital, they were exporting American jobs to low wage companies and he doesn't want to be associated with it," Durbin said, answering his own question.

Democrats have hammered Romney on his work at Bain, suggesting that he played a role managing companies owned by the firm after 1999 which laid off workers and over his personal offshore financial holdings. A report last week in Vanity Fair detailing Romney’s accounts and transactions in Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands sparked renewed Democratic calls for him to release more tax returns.

"Mitt Romney can clear the air this afternoon on this whole issue by making a more complete disclosure of economic information," Durbin said.

Romney has released returns from 2010 and an estimate of his 2011 taxes and says he will not disclose additional records.

Republican Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) defended Romney's business record, saying Obama is "fibbing, he is misrepresenting the facts about Bain Capital."

Kyl charged that the administration’s own poor economic record had sent American jobs overseas.

"I think the important point that people are missing here…is that the reason that businesses find that they have to find employees in other states and even sometimes in other countries to do their work is that this administration has made it so hard to do business in the United States and be competitive," Kyl said.

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