Arlington, VA-

The eagerly awaited McCain tax returns from 2006 and 2007 were released today. The documents, provided by his campaign (and posted on their website) showed that the GOP presumptive nominee  earned over  $400, 000 last year, and paid a total of $84,000 in federal income taxes. McCain also donated more than $100,00 to charity last year, and donated  $256,898 in book royalties combined for 2006 and 2007.The entire McCain family fortune, however, was not revealed as it is mostly held by his wife. Beer heiress Cindy McCain is the  chairwoman of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the country.Her wealth is estimated to be over $100 million, but since the McCains have a prenuptial agreement, she holds the majority of their assets and they have filed their taxes separately for the majority of their 27-year marriage. This year was no different.

During a state of the race  press briefing this morning, campaign senior officials said that the decision to keep Mrs. McCain’s tax returns private was to protect the couple’s children who are “reflected in her return.”

DNC Chairman Howard Dean hit McCain for not divulging the family’s total amount.”John McCain’s lack of transparency is troubling and raises questions about what he’s hiding,” Dean said in a statement provided by the Democratic party.

McCain senior aide Steve Schmidt said that Democrats set a  precedent in 2004 when Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of then Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) , decided not to disclose her returns.

“There was a germaneness there because John Kerry would not have been nominee if not for the loan out of her assets in 2004, “said Schmidt.” She didn’t release her taxes and ,you know, they were treated as private. We think that’s a precedent.”

Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod and Communications Director Robert Gibbs hosted a conference call with reporters Sunday, while the senator himself spent the day with his family. The intent of the call was to focus on Senator Clinton’s lack of transparency. Gibbs outlined four questions directed towards Senator Clinton:

1.    Will the Clinton campaign release their full tax returns, including schedules?
2.    Will Senator Clinton release all of her earmark requests?                                                                  3.    Will the Clinton campaign release the names of all donors to the Clinton foundation and to the Clinton library, and if not, why?
4.    Will the Clinton campaign instruct the Clinton Library to release all of their records?

“The Clinton campaign has made a premium out of making sure that candidates are vetted, that transparency is full, and their failure to continue to answer these questions simply brings us another series of questions, which is what is Senator Clinton hiding and what is lurking in those documents that she believes voters don’t have a right to know?” Gibbs asked.

But during the question and answer period of the call, the reporters switched gears, focusing the latest hot topic in the Democratic race - Obama’s relationship with the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Axelrod stressed Obama had  been forthright on the controversy and had condemned Wright’s statements, pointing out this was a personally difficult time for Senator Obama. “As you know Reverend Wright married him, introduced him, as [Obama] said, to the church, brought him into the church, into Christianity, baptized his children. So this is a painful thing for him because he condemns the things that Rev. Wright said, but he also knows him as a person, so it’s a difficult matter for him.”

When asked if the story would damage the campaign, Axelrod observed, “Reverend Wright is gone from the church now; he’s no longer the pastor of the church and I think people will hear Senator Obama on this issue, and…they understand that these do not represent his views, and they don’t represent the sum total of what Rev Wright has done over the years or their relationship. I think that this will pass, but we understand there’s a lot of interest in it now.”

Axelrod then asked Gibbs, “Robert, do you have anything to add?” Gibbs replied, “No, I think that covers it.”

On the daily conference call for reporters, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson responded to the Obama campaign’s demand for Senator Clinton’s tax returns with a heated call for Obama to practice what he’s preaching — saying “if they want to talk about disclosure, let’s talk about it.”

“Before we talk about taxes, I would ask the Obama campaign if he or they are prepared to release all of his taxes when he was in elected office. So far the answer to that has been no,” he said. The campaign plans to release the Clintons’ tax returns since 2000 “on or about April 15th,” while Obama has released returns only for 2006; by way of contrast, Wolfson said the American people already have 20 years of Clinton financial statements in the public domain.

He also questioned Obama’s failure to release documents from his years in the Illinois state senate — as well as his explanation that those records don’t exist. “Let’s talk about state senate records,” he said. “I would ask the Obama campaign, are you prepared to release all your earmark requests when you were in the state Senate?”

Pointing out that the National Archives has said that Sen Clinton’s schedules from her time in the White House will soon be released, Wolfson said “Senator Obama can put out his schedules in the state Senate at any time, he hasn’t done so. He claims no records exist from his state Senator days.”

“If we want to go down this road, there are questions that ought to be posed to the Obama campaign that they have heretofore refused to answer.”

Senior Strategist Mark Penn subtly admonished reporters for not digging deepy enough into Obama’s unreleased documents. “One would think the demand would not be for some additional information when we’ve already done senate disclosures, but of this important set of information about Senator Obama that could be critical for the voters in these last 12 jurisdictions making their decisions,” he said, arguing that the time to release those documents is now, not later.

For full (but mercifully brief) notes on the hour-long call, keep reading below.

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