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Durbin says '47 percent' remark shows Romney judges people by their tax status
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said voters should continue to demand that Mitt Romney release more of his personal tax returns, especially in light of the Republican presidential nominee's videotaped remarks to campaign contributors in Florida. Durbin says the remarks reveal that Romney judges Americans based on their tax returns.
"In Boca Raton, he judged 47 percent of the American people based on their income tax returns," Durbin said on the Senate floor. "We should judge Mitt Romney based on his income tax returns, or his refusal to disclose them."
Durbin was referring to remarks Romney made in Florida that were released in a video this week, in which Romney said 47 percent of voters believe they are victims who are entitled to government help. He said his "job is not to worry about those people."
"I think there is more truth than not in what he says when it comes to his point of view of this country," Durbin said. "This was a revelation into his values and his view of America, but it also tells us that he doesn't understand this country and the people who live in it."
Durbin also argued that right now, voters cannot trust Romney based on his tax information because the GOP candidate has released so little of it.
In that way, Durbin said, Romney has failed to live up to the "gold standard" set by his father's presidential campaign decades ago. George Romney, a former governor of Michigan, released 12 years of tax information when he ran for president in the 1968 campaign.
"The son didn't learn from the father," Durbin said.
In addition, Durbin said businesspeople he has talked to agree that Romney's offshore accounts can only be explained as an effort to conceal his wealth or avoid tax liability.
"Why do you have those? To avoid tax liability in the United States," Durbin charged.
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