Democratic congressional candidate calls on Trump to release his tax returns, but won’t show his | Clout

Democrat Scott Wallace wants President Trump to release his tax returns. But he isn't so eager to hand over his own.

Wallace, a multimillionaire philanthropist running to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in the Philadelphia suburbs, has campaigned on a promise to introduce legislation to require all presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns.

He also tweeted that Fitzpatrick was a "prime example" of Republicans' insufficiently condemning Trump's buddy-buddy attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that "requiring Trump to release his tax returns could be a good start."

So why hasn't he coughed up his own tax returns?

Asked that question at an Inquirer Editorial Board meeting, Wallace said that "when we have disclosure at the top, then maybe we can talk about the vice president and maybe about senators," adding that "the disclosure of tax returns is not a commonplace thing" and "I don't know that any other congressional candidates have done it."

The only problem with that: Some candidates for Congress and other offices have released their tax returns. In fact, Gov. Wolf has handed over his, and the state Democratic Party has chided his Republican opponent, Scott Wagner, for not doing the same.

Wallace also said that "you all have access to my financial disclosure form, which shows every single company I have shares of stock in."

That's true. Wallace's disclosure statement shows that his wealth is between $127 million and $309 million.

But we have access to Trump's financial disclosure statement, too. If that's not good enough for Wallace, why should it be good enough for us?

Wallace added, "Releasing tax returns does open a Pandora's box of questions of everything. My tax return, of course, is a fraction of the size of Donald Trump's."

We, of course, have no way of knowing whether that's true.

Fitzpatrick, for his part, wasn't any more transparent. Back in July, he said Trump and Wallace should both release their tax returns. He asked if Wallace was a "tax hypocrite" for asking for Trump's files but not releasing his own.

The Fitzpatrick campaign didn't provide his tax return when we asked for it this week.

Seems like Wallace isn't the only tax hypocrite in Pennsylvania's race for the First District.

You know what scientists say about climate change: It's not a sure thing!

Just kidding. In fact, as the Associated Press has written, "The world's scientific organizations say that the world's climate is changing because of the buildup of heat-trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the burning of coal, oil and gas. This is supported by more than 90 percent of the peer-reviewed scientific literature."

But Republican congressional candidate Marty Nothstein seemed to suggest climate change science was still up for debate in a recent forum.

Nothstein was asked about the issue this month at a discussion among candidates for Pennsylvania's Seventh District, which was moderated by Alan Jennings, executive director of Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley.

"What is your position on whether and how we save ourselves or at least our grandchildren at this point?" asked Jennings.

Nothstein replied that "we have some extremes now in our weather patterns," and "it's something that is still being studied tremendously."

He also said: "I will say this, I haven't bought into the entire global warming issue yet. You do look at extremes at times and we might see certain highs a year or two ago. But if you look back at the previous temperature at that point or previous snow storm, it's 50, 60 years before that."

Asked about it Thursday, Nothstein backtracked. A little.

"As to my views on climate change: I believe it is real and that human activity plays a role in it," he wrote in an email.

He added, "It is unclear how much of a role humans play, as many doomsday predictions have wildly missed the mark. As we confront this challenge going forward, it would be disastrous to abruptly abandon all use of fossil fuels. It would wreck our economy and vastly change our standard of living."

We're going to keep having this debate until we're all underwater, aren't we?

Under President Obama, Democrats lost more than 900 seats in state legislatures across the country.

Forward Majority, a super PAC, is trying to win them back before congressional districts are redrawn in 2021.

Philip Shulman, a spokesman for Forward Majority, shared details with Clout about the group's plans for Pennsylvania.

He said the organization is "looking at over 20 races" here and could spend "somewhere well into the six figures, if not more."

He specifically mentioned a few state Republicans who may be in the super PAC's bull's eye: Martina White, Thomas Murt, Rosemary Brown, and Duane Milne. As opposed to focusing on the Philadelphia suburbs alone, where Democrats hope to make gains, Shulman said their targets are "all over the place."

“There’s a lot of flippable seats,” Shulman said of Pennsylvania’s legislature. “There need to be checks and balances. That’s what’s driving a lot of enthusiasm.”