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Hillary, Romney, McCain Delay Financial Filings
WASHINGTON -- Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday joined three other presidential candidates in seeking to delay the filing of personal financial disclosure reports. The reports identify the assets, liabilities and sources of income of the candidates and their spouses. Other candidates filed their reports with the Federal Election Commission by Tuesday's deadline. The FEC will make them public within days. Clinton and former President Clinton are millionaires, according to past disclosure forms. In 2005, the former president made nearly $7.5 million in speaking fees. The couple had a blind trust valued at between $5 million and $25 million and a Citibank account of similar size. The others who received 45-day extensions are Republicans - former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore. McCain had filed a disclosure report earlier this year, but the Federal Election Commission and the Office of Government Ethics concluded that he needed to file anew. McCain requested the extension, in part, because the ethics office said he needed to disclose holdings in a blind trust in the name of McCain's wife, Cindy. The trust has assets between $500,000 and $1 million. The presidential forms differ from the Senate disclosure forms and require more detailed reporting. For instance, Clinton would have to report all the former president's speeches up to the date of filing.
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Other candidates filed by Tuesday's deadline but did not make their reports public. The FEC makes the disclosures publicly available after they have been reviewed by its office of general counsel, a process that can take several days. Another common practice in presidential campaigns is the release of income tax returns. But so far this year, only Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has released his 2006 tax returns. He and his wife Michelle reported total income of $991,000, with more than half from Obama's two books - a memoir and his political treatise, "The Audacity of Hope." Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., announced Tuesday that he, too, would release his tax returns. While the disclosure reports reveal the identity of income sources and of the assets held by candidates and their spouses, they only provide a range of the amount of the holding. That makes it difficult to determine a candidate's net worth.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Democrat John Edwards declined to reveal the amount of money he made working for Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund that Edwards said he joined to better understand the relationship between wealth and poverty. Edwards said his financial disclosure would show how much he earned, but only Edwards' tax return would specify the exact amount. The disclosure would only list his income as a range - $250,000-$500,000 or $500,000-$1 million, for instance. Republican Rudy Giuliani released his tax returns while he was mayor of New York. Since then, however, he has been involved in a series of private consulting ventures. Romney, who founded the investment company Bain Capital, has total assets estimated at between $190 million and $250 million. "Presidential candidates ought to be prepared to have their finances treated as an open book," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group that advocates for tighter ethics rules in government. "It is the highest office in the land and people should be prepared to let citizens see the full track record of information about their financial arrangements."
© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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