Obama Camp Pushes Romney to Disclose Finances

The president’s campaign and his surrogates are accusing the presumptive Republican nominee of hiding the sources of his multimillion-dollar fortune and of refusing to release multiple years of his tax returns. On Monday, they also mocked Mr. Romney’s weekend fund-raisers at glamorous estates in the Hamptons.

In an interview with a New Hampshire television station on Monday, Mr. Obama added his voice to the criticism of his rival, saying that Americans should “know who you are and what you’ve done and that you’re an open book. And that’s been true of every presidential candidate dating all the way back to Mitt Romney’s father.”

Senior aides to Mr. Obama’s campaign say the intent is not to attack the rich, or even the fact of Mr. Romney’s wealth. Instead, the focus on Mr. Romney’s personal fortune is part of a broader plan, they say, to disqualify Mr. Romney’s economic credentials in the eyes of voters.

“It’s about the fact that Governor Romney, who could be the first president in history to keep his finances offshore, has defied precedent and kept his tax returns secret even though they could prove whether or not he avoided paying taxes,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama.

Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, called questions about the Republican’s wealth an “unfounded character assault” and said it was “unseemly and disgusting.”

The aggressive push by Democrats comes just days after another mediocre jobs report provided new ammunition for Mr. Romney’s criticism of the president’s economic policies. Just 80,000 jobs were added in June, capping the worst quarter since the summer of 2010 for job creation.

Mr. Obama sought a quick change of subject on Monday with his call for an extension of middle-class tax cuts, saying that the fate of similar cuts for the wealthy would be resolved by voters in November’s election.

“My opponent will fight to keep them in place,” he said. “I will fight to end them.”

Meanwhile, the president’s advisers and allies are intensifying their focus on Mr. Romney’s financial holdings, seizing on reports by the news media that some of the Republican’s personal money is kept in overseas bank and investment accounts. The reports added new details about the status of Mr. Romney’s finances.

The existence of a Swiss bank account was first disclosed in January, when Mr. Romney released his 2010 tax returns. Advisers have said the account was closed that year.

But an article in Vanity Fair magazine published last week added new details about other holdings in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, which served as complex investment holdings for partnership income that Mr. Romney continued to receive for years after leaving Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded two decades ago.

The article said Mr. Romney has financial interests of at least $30 million in 12 funds in the Cayman Islands.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney’s campaign, said on Fox News Sunday that the Republican candidate “hasn’t paid a penny less in taxes by virtue of where these funds are domiciled.” He added, “His liability is exactly the same as if he held the fund investments directly in the U.S.”

But that answer has not stopped Democrats and Mr. Obama’s campaign from attacking. The Democratic National Committee created a video on Sunday highlighting reports of bank accounts in offshore institutions.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Monday, Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, bluntly accused the Republican candidate of not giving voters the information they need to make a decision about his wealth.

“Release the tax returns,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Put all this to rest. If Mitt Romney is not hiding something in Bermuda and Switzerland and the Caymans, it will be in the tax returns.”

Dan Senor, an adviser to Mr. Romney, on the same “Morning Joe” episode, said that Mr. Gibbs was being “stunningly dishonest” in his attacks. “The reason we know about these accounts, as Robert knows, is because they are in the tax returns that Mitt Romney released,” Mr. Senor said.

The Obama campaign is walking a fine line — trying to make Mr. Romney seem out of touch while not appearing to question the value of being a wealthy businessman. That kind of message could backfire, especially with moderate voters in battleground states.

“It’s not about wealth,” Mr. LaBolt wrote in an e-mail. “There have been other wealthy candidates, nobody is out to demonize wealth.”

So far, Mr. Obama’s campaign has focused more directly on Mr. Romney’s role as a business executive, suggesting that his career was a boon to the wealthy and that he did not have the interests of workers at heart.

Now, Democrats are hoping to contrast Mr. Obama’s refusal to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and Mr. Romney’s desire to cut taxes for people like him.

Mr. Romney’s advisers believe that the effort will misfire. They argue that voters want the candidates to talk about how they will turn around the economy.

Polling suggests they may be right. A Washington Post/ABC News poll in April found that 71 percent of those surveyed did not consider Mr. Romney’s wealth to be a major reason to support or oppose him. Among those who said it was a major factor in the decision, his wealth was more likely to be a negative.

For the most part, Mr. Romney’s advisers intend to ignore the attacks on his personal wealth. On Monday, they focused on Mr. Obama’s renewed call to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

“Americans are struggling in a ‘zombie economy,’ and President Obama’s only answer is to pass one of the largest tax hikes in history,” Ms. Henneberg said.

Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.

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