Harry Reid: 47% Comment a ‘Rare Look at the Real Mitt Romney’
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Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats pounced this morning on Mitt Romney’s 47% comment, using the Senate floor as a platform to take advantage of what the comment, they say, reveals about the Republican nominee for president.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that Romney’s fundraiser comments were a “rare look at the real Mitt Romney,” proving that he “doesn’t deserve to serve any American as president.”
And Reid renewed his charge that Mitt Romney may not have paid income tax in some years. Romney has said he paid at least a 13 percent tax rate for the past ten years.
“For all we know Mitt Romney could be one of those who have paid federal income tax,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “Thousands of families making more than a million dollars per year pay no federal income tax.”
This week it was revealed that at a closed-door fundraiser in May, Romney told wealthy supporters that he could not hope to win the votes of the 47 percent of Americans who, he said, do not pay federal income taxes.
Romney’s comment was part of a 30-minute speech that was secretly videotaped and posted online this week. In it, Romney characterized that group of income-tax-free Americans as being “dependent on the government” and feeling “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
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