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**FILE** Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks June 6, 2012, during a ... more >
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Prominent Democrats on Sunday, including the governor of Maryland, a former White House press secretary and the head of the Democratic National Committee, launched a coordinated attack on Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s finances.
It began on “Fox News Sunday,” with DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz pushing Mr. Romney to release more tax returns and blasting his international bank accounts and investments.
“Americans need to ask themselves, why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account and secretive investments like that?” she asked.
Former Obama administration spokesman Robert Gibbs, now an adviser to the president’s re-election team, took a similar tack while mocking Mr. Romney’s campaign slogan.
“Mitt Romney’s slogan is ‘believe in America.’ It should be ‘business in Bermuda,’” Mr. Gibbs said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Not to be outdone, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said Mr. Romney’s offshore accounts prove he’s unequipped to create jobs in the U.S.
“I’ve never known of a Swiss bank account to build an American bridge, a Swiss bank account to create American jobs or a Swiss bank account to rebuild the levies to protect the people of New Orleans,” he said on ABC’S “This Week.”
“That’s not an economic strategy for moving our country forward.”
The Romney campaign has pushed back against the Democrats’ strategy and has argued that it’s yet another attempt to distract from the lagging U.S. economy. Campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said recently that Mr. Romney is not, as some Democrats have suggested, dodging taxes by depositing money in other nations.
“He hasn’t paid a penny less in taxes of where these funds are domiciled. His liability is exactly the same as if he held the fund investments directly in the U.S.,” Mr. Madden said. “As a U.S. citizen, he is accountable for U.S. taxes. Some investments in some foreign countries can be tax havens. But Mitt Romney does not hold any such investments.”
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