Harry Reid Refusing to Release Tax Returns

By Newsroom America Staff at 7 Aug 2012

(Newsroom America) -- Even as he continued to echo White House calls for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns, a spokesman for Harry Reid said the Senate majority leader would not be releasing his own.

"He’s not running for president. ...He has of course released more than 30 years of detailed [personal finance disclosures]. There is exponentially more information available to the public about Sen. Reid’s financial life than there is about Mitt Romney’s," Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson told Politico last week.

Congressional financial forms provide different information than do tax returns, the political daily noted.

Republicans have hammered Reid for hypocrisy over the issue. Also, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in an op-ed on Monday, resurrected a quote from Reid in 1974, in which he said, "Any man or woman who will not be completely candid about his or her finances does not deserve to be in public office."

Reid, who was questioned about the quote this week, responded, "In 1974, I wasn't in Congress."

"All you have to do is go look," Reid said. "file every year, every stock trade, every piece of land I buy, all the money I have, it has the value of my homes, it’s got it all there."

Reid, from the floor of the Senate, also insinuated last week that Romney may even have violated federal tax laws over the last decade, a charge the presumptive GOP nominee called baseless and demanded that Reid apologize, which he has not done.

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