Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said on Monday that Mitt Romney should release more tax returns, but said the issue didn’t “amount to diddly” in the campaign.
The presumptive Republican nominee has been hit hard lately by Democrats for not releasing more tax returns, which could shed light on Romney’s foreign investments in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
When asked on CNN’s The Situation Room whether Romney should release more of his tax returns, Barbour said, “I would. But should it be an issue in the campaign? I don’t think it amounts to diddly.”
The Romney campaign has previously said that the candidate’s 2011 tax returns were sufficient. However, Democrats are using Romney’s father as an example. George Romney, the late governor of Michigan and Republican presidential candidate, released more than 10 years of tax returns when he ran for office, a point that Democrats have repeated.
"It's the least amount of disclosure of any presidential candidate of either political party in the last 36 years,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Monday on MSNBC’s The Ed Show. “There are two reasons to have a Swiss Bank account: To conceal your wealth and transactions involving your wealth from government scrutiny, No. 1. Or, No. 2, because you happen to think the Swiss Franc is a stronger currency than the United States dollar.”
Late Monday, the Obama campaign released an online video, asking what Romney was "hiding" in the rest of his tax returns. The Romney campaign continues to call these attacks a “distraction” from what they say is the president’s poor performance on the economy.
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