Friend --
Friday morning, I sent a letter to Mitt Romney's campaign manager, asking that Romney release just five years of tax returns. And I made a commitment that, if he does, this campaign would not demand more.
You should add your name. Here's why:
Right now, our opponent is proposing a $2,000 tax increase on middle-class families with kids in order to pay for tax breaks for millionaires like him.
He's asking Americans to put him in charge of their taxes, while refusing to come clean about his own.
This isn't going away because voters deserve better, and everyone but the Romney campaign seems to recognize that.
Call for Mitt Romney to join President Obama in this basic and traditional act of transparency: Add your name.
Romney's refusal to release his returns is raising more questions than he's been willing to answer.
According to the one full year of returns he has released, Romney paid 13.9% in taxes on his income. Thursday, he said he went back and looked, and has never paid less than 13% over the last ten years.
Now we're asking him to put his money where his mouth is.
It is absolutely relevant for us to ask how much a presidential candidate paid in taxes, if he sheltered his money or tried to get out of paying taxes at all, why he started -- and continues to own -- a corporation offshore in Bermuda, why he keeps his finances offshore in the Cayman Islands, and why he opened a Swiss bank account.
In refusing to be transparent about it, he's not only breaking the trust he's asking voters to place in him, but also three decades of precedent that began with his own father's presidential campaign in 1968.
This issue isn't going away, and for good reason. Tell Romney to follow 30 years of precedent and release his tax returns:
http://my.barackobama.com/Release-the-Returns
Thanks,
Messina
Jim Messina