Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said he has reviewed his tax returns and that over the last decade he always paid at least 13 percent of his income in taxes.
Romney has released his 2010 return, which shows that he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent on more than $21 million in income, most of it from capital gains and dividends. He has pledged to release his 2011 returns when they are completed, while rejecting calls from Democrats and some Republicans that he release additional years.
“The fascination with taxes I've paid I find to be very small-minded compared to the broad issues that we face,” he told reporters today in Greer, South Carolina.
“But I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past 10 years I never paid less than 13 percent,” he said. “If you add in addition, the amount that goes to charity, why, the number gets well above 20 percent.”
As he has before, Romney scoffed at a recent claim that he paid no taxes in some years made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, cited an unnamed source in making the accusation.
'Totally False'
“So I paid taxes every single year,” Romney said. “Harry Reid's charge is totally false. I'm sure waiting for Harry to put up who it was that told him what he says they told him. I don't believe it for a minute, by the way.”
Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson responded in an e-mail saying, “Until Mitt Romney releases his tax returns, Americans will continue to wonder what he's hiding.”
Reid first claimed in a Huffington Post article that an investor in Bain Capital LLC, the private equity firm Romney co- founded, told him that Romney hadn't paid any taxes for 10 years. Jentleson said that day in an e-mail that he had “no idea” who the investor was.
Romney called today's brief news conference to press his attacks on President Barack Obama on Medicare, an issue that has dominated the campaign since he chose House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan -- the architect of a plan to eventually offer seniors a fixed amount of money to buy private insurance - - as his vice presidential running mate on Aug. 11.
Voucher Description
Romney denied that his Medicare proposal could fairly be characterized as a voucher program, retreating from a description he used last year to describe letting seniors receive a government subsidy to buy insurance. The former Massachusetts governor said at the time that he supported giving future seniors a choice of staying in the traditional Medicare program -- which provides set benefits -- or taking the fixed contribution to buy their own coverage, an approach Ryan has also adopted.
In an October interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, he said that “you have a program like Paul Ryan has proposed, which says we're going to give people vouchers to let them choose among private plans.”
He described such a plan as having “a good deal of merit. I would not at the same time want to remove the option from people to have standard Medicare. But I would probably move toward a more managed care approach even in Medicare itself.”
Today, aided up by a white board and dry-erase marker, Romney sought to back up his charge that Obama is harming seniors with cuts to Medicare. With one column labeled “Obama” and the other labeled “Romney,” he ticked off the ways he said the president has weakened Medicare, including $716 billion in cuts that were used to finance the 2010 health-care law.
'Dramatic Impact'
“The president's plan has a dramatic impact on today's seniors -- people 55 years of age and older,” he said.
Asked what he would say to voters who worried his approach -- known as premium support -- might raise costs for future retirees, Romney responded. “Which of these two do you think is better: going bankrupt, or being solvent?”
He said his plan “gives all of the next-generation retirees the option of having either standard Medicare, a fee- for-service-type, government-run Medicare, or a private Medicare plan. They get their choice.”
Obama has dismissed the criticism of how his health-care law affects Medicare, telling an audience in Dubuque, Iowa, earlier his week that the Republicans “ are just throwing everything at the wall to see if sticks.”
“I have strengthened Medicare,” he said. “They want to turn Medicare into a voucher program” that would force beneficiaries to pay more for health coverage.
--Bloomberg News--
