President Clinton: Romney's Hiding The Truth From The American People

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, the last thing could say is, I had a lot of fun down at the Democratic Convention talking about arithmetic. But I listened very carefully to the Vice Presidential debate and to the second Presidential debate, and Mr. Romney says, I’m going to do all of this, I’m going to just cut taxes for the middle class, I’m not interested in rich people, they’ll pay the same percentage of tax they pay now. What does that mean? He thinks we’re dumb.

[Laughter]

If you cut everybody else’s taxes and people in my income group pay the same percentage, it means we get a tax cut too. Right? We have too. You cut everybody else’s taxes, and I say that my percentage should go up if you freeze my taxes. So, in the debate, without saying so, he got caught with a fact. He hates to get caught admitting anything. And so, we keep saying, show us your budget. Where are your numbers? The President has given you a budget. He said you won’t like all of it. It adds to two and a half dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of new revenues, but we’ve got to do something about the debt. It will take the debt down $4 trillion. Here are my numbers. Where are your numbers? This guy ran Bain Capital and is a business guy, and he’s hiding his budget? That ought to tell you something. He – well, he’s hiding his taxes, too, but he’s hiding his taxes in the years when he earned ordinary income. He’s given us two years when he was just running for president. And, he’s hiding whether he would have signed the Lilly Ledbetter act. He’s hiding everything. He doesn’t want you to think about him. He wants you to think, oh this economy is terrible. “I’m a jobs guy.” And as President Obama said in the debate, if I brought you a deal to Bain Capital and I said, fund my new business, I’ll give you the budget sometime in the future, just trust me on that – you wouldn’t give me one red cent, and we should not give him one vote on that.

CSPAN Coverage in Parma, OH - October 18th, 2012