Perry pushes Romney on releasing taxes

AUSTIN (KXAN) - On the day President Barack Obama arrived in Austin, Republican Gov. Rick Perry appeared to chide presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney for not making more of his personal tax information public.

Perry, who made his own bid for the 2012 presidential nomination, told reporters in Austin that anyone who aspires to lead the nation should lay out as much personal financial information as is practical.

"I am a big believer that no matter who you are or what office you're running for, you should be as transparent as you can be with your tax returns and other aspects of your life so people can have the appropriate ability to judge your background," Perry said.

Perry's remarks did not go as far as some of his fellow Republicans in pushing Romney to release more than a year or two of tax information. But Perry did note that as a presidential hopeful, he released his own tax information dating back to the 1990s.

But the governor did not spare the Democratic president who came to Texas seeking campaign cash. He said Obama should release the transcripts of his grades from college and law school.

Perry also had harsh words for the administration's legal challenge to Texas' voter ID law..

“Perhaps while the President is visiting Texas, he can take a break from big-dollar fundraisers to disavow his Attorney General’s offensive and incendiary comments regarding our common-sense voter identification law,” Perry said in a statement.

The governor challenged the president to distance himself from remarks made by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in his speech last week to the NAACP convention in Houston – specifically comparing the state’s voter ID law to the Jim Crow-era “poll tax.”

“In labeling the Texas voter ID law as a “poll tax,” Eric Holder purposefully used language designed to inflame passions and incite racial tension. It was not only inappropriate, but simply incorrect on its face.

“The president should apologize for Holder’s imprudent remarks and for his insulting lawsuit against the people of Texas,” said Perry, who made the law an emergency in state's last legislative session.

In his speech, Holder said that with Texas’s law, “many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes.

Those remarks came in the same week a three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. heard arguments between the president’s administration and the state of Texas over the voter ID law. The ID itself is free, but the documentation necessary to obtain the ID is not.

Holder said the law would be “harmful to minority voters” because only 75 percent of African Americans have the proper identification – birth certificate or a Social Security, among others. He added that 92 percent of whites had the ID.

“In labeling the Texas voter ID law as a ‘poll tax,’ Eric Holder purposefully used language designed to inflame passions and incite racial tension. It was not only inappropriate, but simply incorrect on its face,” Perry said.

Perry, meanwhile, was also the subject of protest -- even on his own turf. On Tuesday, the corridors outside of his office in the Capitol was crowded with people protesting his decision to opt out of part of the president's health care law.

"We worked hard, because we want a country where everybody gets a fair shot and everybody's doing their fair share and everybody's playing by the same set of rules," Obama said in a speech in San Antonio. "That's why I ran for president in 2008. That's why I'm running for a second term as President of the United States of America."

Obama is set attend two fundraisers in San Antonio on Tuesday, followed by two more in Austin. His visit is expected to set fundraising records for a Democrat in San Antonio. The ticket prices for his main Austin event at the downtown Austin Music Hall range from $250 per person to $7,500 per couple.