President Obama has a plan for funding his health care takeover, but it may not be what the citizens of Hopenchange expected. In order to pay for more than $300 billion of an over $630 billion tab, Obama says he’ll just curb the amount of deductions rich folks get for donating to charities.
What a guy! The good news is, according to George Stephanopoulos, it’s probably dead on arrival:
In my reporting across Capitol Hill today, I couldn’t find any strong support for the plan.
And it’s strongly opposed by several key Democrats on the key Senate Finance Committee, including chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
But the Obama administration is pushing back.
The White House argues this would only affect the top 1.2 percent of taxpayers and about one percent of charitable contributions.
"A middle-class family donates $1 to charity, they get 15 cents off their income tax. Bill Gates donates $1 to charity, he takes 35 cents off his income tax. The proposal that the White House has would simply reduce those levels to the same levels that we saw during the Reagan administration," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today during his briefing to reporters.
But their bottom line message to lawmakers: If you have a better idea, we’re all ears.
The Obama Administration is "all ears." Some jokes just write themselves, folks.
Not that we should be surprised by this. The President isn’t really that charitable to begin with:
Up until recent years when their income increased sharply from book revenues and a Senate salary, Obama’s family donated a relatively minor amount of its earnings to charity. From 2000 through 2004, the senator and his wife never gave more than $3,500 a year in charitable donations — about 1 percent of their annual earnings. In 2005, however, that total jumped to $77,315 (4.7 percent of annual earnings), and to $60,307 in 2006 (6.1 percent).
Biden could stand to give a little more also:
Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden released 10 years of tax returns Friday…The Bidens’ joint gross income hovered between $215,000 and $320,000 a year during this period…The amount they gave to charity during this period never exceeded one-half of 1% of their annual income. The Bidens never gave more than $995 to charity in any of the tax years, and usually gave much less.
A little perspective…the man demonized by the left as Darth Vader, Vice-President Dick Cheney, gave more than both of the above combined:
In one of the largest sums ever donated to charity by a U.S. public official, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne gave away nearly $7 million last year to help the poor and to medical research.
According to income tax information released by the White House on Friday, the Cheneys’ adjusted gross income in 2005 was $8,819,006.
For once, I hope George Stephanopoulos is right.
