Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Mitt Romney's super secret tax returns

Visual source: Newseum

Mitt Romney has released his 2010 tax return return and an estimate for 2011. When he was being vetted by John McCain for the vice-presidential slot in 2008, Mitt Romney provided the McCain camp with 23 years of tax returns. His 2008 and 2009 tax returns haven't seen the light of the day to anyone outside of Romney's private circle. John Cassidy at The New Yorker brings up a fact that has received little attention in the media:

His ten-year severance agreement with Bain Capital ended in 2009.

What is so important about Romney's 2008 and 2009 tax returns that he's willing to endure the wrath of the right, left and everyone in between about his lack of transparency and disclosure?

With that question, on to the punditry...Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post:

Mitt Romney has every right to cloak his personal and professional finances in secrecy ' and voters have every right to assume he has something embarrassing to hide. If this seems unfair, Romney has only himself to blame.

Through a series of miscalculations, Romney has managed to turn what should have been a minor hiccup into what may be a defining moment, and not in a good way. Attacks by President Obama's campaign serve mainly to draw attention to the train wreck.

Dana Milbank:

We know the attack is working because Karl Rove says it isn't. He called it a 'big mistake' to suggest, as Obama aide Stephanie Cutter did, that Romney may have committed a felony in misleading the Securities and Exchange Commission. This, Turd Blossom told Fox News, is 'gutter politics of the worst Chicago sort.'

Rove is well-qualified to weigh in on such matters, having presided over Bush's 2004 campaign, during which opponent John Kerry was accused of lying about his war record ' a rather more outrageous allegation than Cutter's. Some of those who funded the attacks on Kerry are now bankrolling Rove's assaults on Obama.

This isn't to excuse Obama for stretching the truth about Romney. But those who portrayed the president as a Muslim radical who pals around with terrorists aren't in a good position to be complaining that Romney is being painted as a vulture capitalist.

William D. Cohen at Bloomberg raises a question few are talking about -- Mitt Romney's "magical" IRA:

The most mysterious of the unexplained mysteries about Mitt Romney's considerable wealth is how he was able to amass between $21 million and $102 million in his individual retirement account during the 15 years he was at Bain Capital LLC.

How did he do it, given the relatively small amounts that the law permits to be contributed to such a plan on an annual basis? Romney has not explained this conundrum, and seeing as he wants to become president, he would be wise to start talking -- if for no other reason than there might be many Americans who would like to emulate what he did.

Joan Walsh at Salon:

So what would be more damaging than what Romney's 2010 and 2011 returns told us? We already know that he's insanely wealthy, that he's got his money in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, and that he paid an obscenely low 13.9 percent tax rate because he made his money from investment, not work, a result of the way our tax system privileges the investor class over even rich people who have to labor for a living. If that's the kind of thing that outrages you, you've got enough to be outraged about.

But what if Romney had years where he paid no taxes at all? The New Yorker's John Cassidy surveys the list of possible reasons for Romney to hide his returns and seems to think that's the most plausible explanation. Cassidy admits he's in the realm of 'speculation' ' but that's where Romney has left the electorate with his refusal to release more than two years of filings.

Again, no one outside of Romney's inner circle (presumably his wife, his most trusted advisors and his lawyers/accountants) have seen his 2008 and 2009 tax returns. Did Romney pay zero taxes during the height of the recession?

That's actually the question the Obama campaign is asking in a new ad today, "Makes you wonder." (video)

Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

In the '50s and '60s, a period considered the economic heyday of a free and capitalist post-war America, George Romney paid 37 percent of his income in federal taxes.

By 2010, Romney's son paid a total of 13.9 percent of his income in federal taxes, this in an America that is supposedly well on its way to becoming a socialist state, with a confiscatory federal government intent on stealing the wealth of its highest earners.

Andrea Stone at The Huffington Post brings us the McCain campaign perspective:

John McCain's top campaign strategist in 2008 says that Mitt Romney's much-discussed tax returns were not the reason that the Republican candidate chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, but he did acknowledge that Romney's wealth played a factor in the decision.

"I get the political hyperbole and all, but that's not the way the decision was made," Steve Schmidt told The Huffington Post. "We never sat around having a discussion about Mitt Romney's taxes through the prism of a liability if he were chosen" for the ticket.

But he added that Romney's wealth was seen as a liability - "Sen. McCain got caught flat-footed answering a question about how many houses he owned. In fact, they were Cindy McCain's properties but that distinction was lost in the political optics and we knew it would be a big liability that the presidential and the vice presidential candidates together owned more than a dozen homes. It was like something out of a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. I mean, come on."

As many pundits have already pointed out, we already know that Romney is incredibly wealthy and that he pays a much lower tax rate than ordinary Americans. If Schmidt is correct that all the tax returns up to 2007 do is paint the portrait of an extraordinary wealthy man, why is Romney refusing to release them? Would it add to the pressure to release his 2008-2009 returns, which may hold a secret that no one outside of Romney's inner circle is privy to? Whether it's a massive windfall from his severance agreement or paying zero taxes, the last thing Romney can afford right now is more defense on the fact that he got to play by rules written to benefit the rich while the rest of America slogged through the recession.

The Dallas Morning News editorial board:

In modern presidential politics, any candidate who doesn't release several years of income tax returns is foolishly swimming upstream against public opinion and political common sense. Extensive disclosure of tax information is a rite of passage all candidates accept the moment they declare for the presidency.

Erin Burnett at CNN (video):

"It's time, Mitt. Time to put them on the table. We all know what it is. Your taxes." [...]

"If he refuses to release them, it is because: one, he had a lot more money in tax shelters in prior years than he does now. Two, he did something shady. Or, three, he's stupid," Burnett said. "Now Mitt Romney is not a stupid man and if he did something shady -- well, he didn't, because if he did, the IRS would already have found it. So let's assume it's number one. He had a lot of tax shelters. Took advantage of every loophole known to man in the 72,536 page IRS tax code. That's fair and square. That is why the tax code is so long so people can take advantage of it. But here's our decent proposal. Release the returns."

Justin Sink brings us Donald Trump's latest funny:

Mitt Romney surrogate Donald Trump said Monday that the Republican presidential hopeful should refrain from turning over additional tax records unless President Obama reveals his college transcripts.

"You talk about transparency," Trump told Fox News. "We will learn more about Obama when we look at those college applications than any other thing that can happen. I don't think Romney should give anything until such time as Obama gives his college records and applications.'