Sen. Dick Durbin continued to pound Mitt Romney for the secrecy over his finances, asking Ed Schultz Monday: “Why would we stand for a person running for the highest office in the land concealing important elements of their own investment decisions? He says he’s a great businessman.”
Durbin appeared on The Ed Show to talk about Romney’s solitary income tax disclosure. President Obama has released records going back to 2000, and Mitt Romney’s own father, George Romney, released 12 years of records when he ran for president in 1968.
“It’s the least amount of disclosure of any presidential candidate of either political party in the last 36 years,” Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said.
A Vanity Fair article this week described Romney’s Swiss bank account and other secretive holdings in off-shore tax havens. Durbin, who has proposed a bill to crack down on offshore tax havens, said he’d been asking around to understand the purpose of such arrangements. “I have asked business leaders, I have asked Republicans, I asked Warren Buffet the following question,” added Durbin. “Why would anybody need a Swiss Bank account? Warren Buffett said: ‘I’ve never had one, I think we’ve got a lot of great banks in America.’” “There are two reasons to have a Swiss Bank account,” Durbin continued. “To conceal your wealth and transactions involving your wealth from government scrutiny, number one. Or, number two, because you happen to think the Swiss Franc is a stronger currency than the United States dollar.”
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