Obama camp: Romney "blind trust" isn't blind
The campaign grounded its arguments in two issues: One, the fact that Romney continues to receive payments from his old company Bain Capital, and two, the nature of his so-called "blind trust," which the Obama campaign says isn't really blind at all.
Last week, Romney disclosed that he received more than $2 million in fresh payments from Bain, the private equity firm he ran until 1999. Although Romney says his severance agreement with the company ended in 2009, the payment disclosed last week raised the possibility that he would continue to be paid by the company as president.
The Obama campaign called on Romney to release his retirement agreement with Bain and suggested that he is still tied to the company in some unspecified capacity.
"There has to be some reason for the preferential tax treatment that he is receiving," Obama for America General Counsel Robert Bauer said on a conference call with reporters. Bauer said the fact that Romney is paying a 15 percent tax rate on the income, the tax rate for carried interest, suggests Romney is performing services for the company despite claims that he is no longer tied to it.
University of Colorado law professor Victor Fleischer told CBS News that continued payments from the company to the candidate create a potential conflict of interest.
"It's a direct financial interest that runs from Bain to Mitt Romney, and it's not just the fact that he used to work there, it's not just the fact that he might be friendly to Wall Street generally or finance generally, but it's the direct link between how Bain Capital does as a company and Romney's personal financial interest," he said.
The Obama campaign also spotlighted what Bauer said is Romney's choice "to have a blind trust that is not really quite a blind trust." He said that Romney is not fully screened from his investment decisions because (1) the trust is run by Boston lawyer R. Bradford Malt, his longtime personal attorney, and (2) it would not qualify as a federal blind trust, since Romney has signed off on the broad outlines of his portfolio and thus has at least some knowledge of his investments.
In response to a question from CBS News about whether the Obama campaign was alleging that Romney had conflicts of interest that were impacting his positions, Obama press secretary Ben LaBolt pointed to Malt having sold investments in China and tied them to Romney's public statements.
Jan Baran, head of the Election Law and Government Ethics group at Washington law firm of Wiley Rein LLP, said that even if Romney had a federal blind trust, "all the assets that are put into the trust are known to everybody." He compared Romney's situation to that of wealthy former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, whose grandfather founded Hospital Corporation of America, stating that everyone assumed Frist had investments tied to the company.
"The reason a blind trust is created is to eliminate conflicts even though everyone knows what went into a blind trust," he said.
The Romney campaign, which acknowledged in December that Romney's trust would not qualify as blind under federal standards, called the effort to spotlight the issue "another tired distraction by the Obama campaign, which is frantic to avoid discussing the continued rejection of President Obama's agenda by the electorate and by members of his own party."
"As has been reported for years, Governor and Mrs. Romney's assets are managed on a blind basis. They do not control the investment of these assets, which are under the control and overall management of a trustee," said spokesperson Andrea Saul.
The Romney campaign told the Associated Press on Wednesday that Romney, whose net worth is estimated at between $190 and $250 million, will put his holdings in a federal blind trust if elected.
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Do you suppose that the fact that Mitt Romney is STILL receiving income from Bain, a decade after he resigned from the firm, and is paying "carried-interest" rates on that income would give him a wee bit of a conflict of interest in dealing with any attempt to eliminate the "carried-interest" loophole from U.S. tax law? Just wondering....
Two reasons to vote NO for the Mormon White Horse candidate.
Just because you can walk out of the pub at 11:00 am on April 15th and have your tax return filed by 2:00 pm at H&R Block, does not mean that everyone can.
Or, when running a campaign to be the next U.S. President.
that's no excuse to ignore the law.
The media has turned into a state-run propaganda machine anymore I swear...it's really creepy.
Let Obama run on his own merits...what little he has at this point.
Furthermore...Obama hides so much about his past that he cannot get away with pointing fingers as four point back at him.
Hope and Change 2012..... if we can make it until we have a President Romney....
How a company obtains its money, and the risks it takes, if/how it impacts competition, customers, and other factors...
...oh, and if taxpayer money props it up can add to the hallmark of socialism as well.
If a corporation or person gets means via any means that involve taxpayer-funded subsidy, then that is not operating under the rules of "small government", never mind "free market". And, so far, they want all the benefits of the "free market" ("profit") without the risk (hence our subsidizing them all these decades, followed by QEs, bailouts, while they continue the same thing that has led to our economy's demise in the first place. And yet these are not told as being "entitlements". "socialism", or "redistribution of wealth", oddly. Though there ARE other causes, these are rarely discussed and therefore are worthy of being discussed before any of the "typical" reasons...)
Our current system is about as "free market" as the bully who demands everyone's lunch money paid off the principal to look the other way.
Now, ask any proponent of the "free market" for a few more details why the supply-side deserves to keep getting bailed out at the expense of the demand-side... even Ron Paul noted homeowners should be bailed out instead of the banks (and the money would have gotten back to the banks via the homeowners anyway), and his campaign was otherwise a tad light on specific details as well.
With that said, let's look at what is called the Ryan budget, which is endorsed by most Republicans and candidate Romney. It proposes cutting federal spending by massive layoffs of government workers, cutting funding to states, reducing funding to Medicare, Medicaid, and education among other things. It is an AUSTERITY program designed to decrease the budget deficit. But it WON'T WORK. Didn't work in Europe, won't work here. Just like "trickle down" economics hasn't worked and never will.
It will cause massive unemployment and reduce the tax base. If you layoff 200,000 (just a number I picked) workers that increases unemployment and decreases the tax base. States, counties, and cities losing funds will layoff say another 200,000 workers as will schools and colleges. It will eliminate consumers from the marketplace, the very customers that business needs to to survive let alone expand. So businesses will layoff additional workers or go out of business. You will have a "snowballing" affect of increasing unemployment. Yet, Romney claims he knows how to create jobs. Oh yes, he is going to magically bring all the jobs shipped to Asia and Mexico back to the U.S.. Let's see how that works. I won't hold my breath until then.