Rommey tells 60 Minutes: Our campaign “doesn’t need a turnaround. We’ve got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent President” … “we’re tied in the polls. We’re all within the margin of error. We bounce around.”
So what did Romney actually release? Not much. Here’s a quick read on what we learned and what remains hidden.
Republican super-hero Gov. Scott Walker expresses “frustration” with Mitt Romney, thought Ryan mojo would “transfer over to our nominee” but hasn’t seen it yet.
We put together this chart a few weeks ago to show how Romney’s effective federal tax rate compares to the average rate of other income brackets. (Keep in mind that was when Romney was saying he paid close to a 15 percent rate, so we used that number; today’s release shows that his 2011 rate was 14.1 percent.)
Romney artificially inflated 2011 taxes after saying, “I don’t pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president.”
The highlight of a summary of Mitt and Ann Romney’s tax rates for each year from 1990 to 2009, provided by the Romney campaign (the actual summary will be released at 3 p.m. ET), is that the Romneys paid federal income taxes each year. There is no year in which they paid zero taxes or had an effective rate of zero, according to the campaign. “Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%,” the campaign says.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) famously — and repeatedly — said he had a reliable source who claimed Romney had paid zero taxes for 10 years.
The Romney campaign just announced that it will be releasing the following documents this afternoon online at 3 p.m.:
*2011 tax returns for (a) Mitt and Ann Romney; (b) The W. Mitt Romney Blind Trust; (c) The Ann D. Romney Blind Trust; and (d) The Romney Family Trust.
*A notarized letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers summarizing the tax rates paid by the Romneys for the 20 years from 1990-2009.
*Physician letters about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan “making public their current state of health.”
More soon.
We noted Tommy Thompson yesterday saying he’d be doing better in his Senate race if he didn’t have to run with Mitt Romney.
Now Herman Cain is saying he’d be way ahead of Obama at this point if he were the nominee because he has “some depth to my ideas.” Read More