Democrats will aim to keep pressure on President Trump to publicly disclose his tax returns, armed in this new Congress with a majority in the House of Representatives and an upcoming presidential election in 2020.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, reintroduced legislation Thursday to require sitting presidents and presidential nominees to release their tax returns from the previous three years.
“Trump blew off a 40-year, bipartisan, pro-transparency tradition by refusing to release his tax returns — a tradition that dates all the way back to Watergate,” said Wyden in a press release. “It’s not just a matter of the president destroying a good-government campaign tradition.”
Wyden’s bill has 18 co-sponsors in the Senate, all Democrats.
House Democrats are also expected to include a similar measure requiring presidential tax return disclosure in an election overhaul bill expected to be the first official legislation introduced in that chamber this Congress.
Though that bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority, the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal D-Mass., has pledged to use a power granted to him in the tax code to request Trump’s tax returns from the Treasury secretary.
During a brief hallway interview on Thursday, Neal gave no timeline as to when that request would come.
“There’s no update, the staff is working on it, that’s it,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “No [timeline], just as it plays out.”
