The Chicago Tribune has a study on Obama’s charitable giving.
He makes old veep Al Gore look like a piker (but then, who doesn’t?).
In 2002, the year before Obama launched his campaign for U.S. Senate, the Obamas reported income of $259,394, ranking them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households, according to Census Bureau statistics. That year the Obamas claimed $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income. The average U.S. household totaled $1,872 in gifts to charity in 2002, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
The national average for charitable giving has long hovered at 2.2 percent of household income, according to the Glenview-based Giving USA Foundation, which tracks trends in philanthropy. Obama tax returns dating to 1997 show he fell well below that benchmark until 2005, the year he arrived in Washington.
$1,050 was three times what Al Gore gave as veep, but still was less than half of one percent of the Obama household income.
Taking his show on the road to the White House has increase his generosity:
Obama’s household income has been inflated the last two years from the proceeds of lucrative book deals he signed shortly before entering the Senate in 2005. He pledged to turn over $200,000 of the book money to charity.
On their just-filed 2006 tax return, Obama and his wife, a hospital administrator, reported taxable income of $983,626 and claimed deductions for $60,307 in charitable donations. In 2005 they earned a combined $1.65 million and gave away about $77,300.
For comparison to the other side of the aisle:
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney released their 2006 returns this month. Bush and the first lady reported gifts to charities and non-profits totaling $78,100 on income of $765,801. Cheney and his wife had income of $1.6 million and gave $104,425 to charity.
Maybe understanding the liberal’s desire to turn so much funding over to the government is a projection of their own inability to willingly part with their own money to help the needy and less fortunate?
No comments:
Post a Comment