Dec. 20 (UPI) \u2014<\/span> The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to publicly release six years of Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns, following years of Democratic efforts to secure the former president\u2019s financial records as Republicans take control of the House next month.<\/p>\n The Democratic-led committee voted to release Trump\u2019s tax returns, which cover eight of his businesses, by a vote of 24-16 on Tuesday evening after meeting behind closed doors for more than three hours.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n It is not clear when Trump\u2019s tax documents, which were originally requested by the committee in 2019, will be made available to the public. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, told CNN it could take \u201ca few days\u201d to redact personal information, such as Social Security numbers.<\/p>\n While Democrats have argued they need the returns to assess an Internal Revenue Service program that audits presidents, Republicans have called it a politically motivated fishing expedition.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the most important votes I will ever cast as a member of Congress, and I stand by it 100 percent,\u201d Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., said after Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was clear today is that public disclosure of President Trump\u2019s private tax returns has nothing to do with the stated purpose of reviewing the IRS presidential audit process,\u201d said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.\n<\/p>\n The chairman of the committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said releasing Trump\u2019s tax returns \u201cwas not about being punitive.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cThis was not about being malicious,\u201d he said as he praised the panel for keeping sensitive information from being leaked.<\/p>\n Trump has continually refused to make his tax returns public since he was elected to the White House, drawing public and political criticism. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a plea by Trump\u2019s lawyers to block the release of his financial information.<\/p>\n In addition to voting to release six years\u2019 worth of Trump\u2019s tax returns, the committee also released legislation to enshrine into law the presidential audit program, after Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., questioned whether the program was working properly.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to publicly release six years of former President Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns. File photo by Bonnie Cash\/UPI | License Photo Dec. 20 (UPI) \u2014 The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to publicly release six years of Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns, following years of Democratic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1268263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}