Obama releases tax returns, campaign hits Clinton on transparency Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday March 25, 2008



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Print This Email This Sen. Barack Obama released seven years worth of his tax returns Tuesday, and his campaign criticized rival Hillary Clinton's failure to release her tax filings from her and husband Bill Clinton's post-White House years. Obama's returns from 2000 through 2006 were posted online (.pdf) Tuesday morning. Clinton's campaign has said it would release her tax returns for 2000 through 2007 "on or around" tax day, April 15, and campaign representatives have promised to do so at least three days before Pennsylvania's April 22 primary. That the returns for those years -- the first in nearly two decades that Bill Clinton was not serving in public office -- have not been released demonstrates a lagging commitment to transparency, Obama's campaign charged. "All she has to do is send someone down to Kinkos to copy the tax returns and post them on her Web site," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs chided during a conference call Tuesday. Clinton's campaign pre-butted the Obama campaign call earlier Tuesday, before the returns were posted online. Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said Obama's campaign should not "jump up on its soap-box" without releasing returns from all of Obama's years in public office, dating back to his election to the Illinois State Senate in 1997. Singer also criticized Obama for not releasing records from his time in state government. Although he said he was unsure whether pre-2000 tax returns would be released, Gibbs insisted that Obama's correspondence with other public officials and agencies when he was a state senator already is public record and beyond that "there's nothing to release." He wondered about "the address of the glass house that Phil is living in," when asked by RAW STORY about the Clinton spokesman's comments. Gibbs said Obama has been more transparent than either Clinton or McCain during this campaign, and he seemed to link Clinton's failure to release her tax returns to the Bush White House's reputation for secrecy. The American people, he said, "have suffered through eight years of a painfully secretive administration, and they want to turn the page on that style of government." DEVELOPING...

