Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) didn't back down Wednesday from his accusation, made in an interview with The Huffington Post, that he heard that Mitt Romney didn't pay taxes for a decade.
"I am not basing this on some figment of my imagination," he told Nevada reporters on a conference call, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I have had a number of people tell me that." He declined to name his source.
"I don't think the burden should be on me," he said. "The burden should be on him. He's the one I've alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn't he release his tax returns?"
Reid originally made the charge in an little noticed speech on the Senate floor in mid-July, but when he repeated it in a recent interview with HuffPost, it provoked a firestorm of controversy
He said a person who invested with Bain Capital called his office. "Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid said the unnamed investor told him.
"He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain," he said. "But obviously he can't release those tax returns. How would it look?"
"You guys have said his wealth is $250 million," he said. "Not a chance in the world. It's a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don't pay taxes for 10 years when you're making millions and millions of dollars."
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