The running mate for Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, said that he let the Romney campaign view multiple years of tax returns but said he is only going to provide two years’ worth of returns to the public. Ryan is from Wisconsin and he joined Romney on ’60 Minutes’ for the first time as running mates in front of the media. Ryan provided the following answer to Bob Schiefer of CBS when the issue of tax returns came up:
“It was a very exhaustive vetting process. It is a confidential vetting process. So there were several years. But I’m going to release the same amount of years that Governor Romney has. But I got to tell you Bob — two, I’m going to be releasing two, which is what he’s releasing -– what I hear from people around this country, they are not asking, ‘Where are the tax returns,’ they are asking where the jobs are? Where is the economic growth?”
Romney still has not released two years of returns. His return for 2010 was released but it had some things missing from it. He released a 2011 estimate. The Romney campaign said that a 2011 full tax return will be available for the public prior to the election.
“Fairness dictates that the highest-income people should pay the greatest share of taxes, and they do,” Romney said during the interview with Schiefer. “And the commitment that I’ve made is we will not have the top income earners in this country pay a smaller share of the tax burden. The highest-income people will continue to pay the largest share of the tax burden and middle-income taxpayers, under my plan, get a break. Their taxes come down.”
During the interview, Ryan even interrupted his running mate, saying, “What we are saying is: Take away the tax shelters that are uniquely enjoyed by people in the top tax brackets so they can’t shelter as much money from taxation, so that you can lower tax rates for everybody to make America more competitive.”
It did not take long for Democrats to respond to the interview. One spokesperson for the Barack Obama campaign, Danny Kanner, said in a mass email, “If Mitt Romney needed to examine several years of tax returns to determine whether Paul Ryan was qualified to be Vice President, why won’t he let the American people see his own returns and determine if he himself is qualified to be President?”
