Democrats sync attacks on Romney’s tax returns, bank accounts

Prominent Democrats, including the governor of Maryland, the party’s No. 2 man in the Senate and a top Obama re-election strategist, launched a coordinated attack Sunday on Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s finances.

At issue are the former Massachusetts governor’s offshore accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere, with Romney critics charging that they prove he’s most interested in maximizing personal profits while potentially avoiding taxes.

Republicans countered that the focus on Mr. Romney’s checkbook, which picked up steam after a damning Vanity Fair article on the subject last week, is meant to distract from President Obama’s weak jobs record and inability to jump-start the economy.

Sunday’s all-out assault began on “Fox News Sunday,” with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman 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 2012 campaign, 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.

“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 levees 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,” he added.

Democrats, however, failed to mention the Obama administration’s own ties to Swiss banks.

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Mona Sutphen, who served from 2009 through 2011, now works as a macro-analyst at Swiss financial giant UBS.

Robert Wolf, the chairman and CEO of UBS‘ American operations, currently serves on the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Those ties have received relatively little attention when compared with the charges now being lobbed against Mr. Romney.

His campaign has begun to push back, with campaign spokesman Kevin Madden assuring the public that Mr. Romney is not, as some Democrats have suggested, dodging taxes by depositing money in other nations.

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