It’s trivially easy to pick on Joe Biden. He’s a walking gaffe machine. He’s the oaf the cool kids let hang around in high school because he was such a rich source of comic relief.
Well, here’s a depressing additional arena for ridicule. (I’m a giver.) The White House recently released the 2008 tax returns of both the Obamas and the Bidens. In 2008, the Bidens earned $269,256, and reported charitable contributions of $1,885.
Yeah. So.
That’s not exactly a high bar to get over. That’s 0.7%, to a couple of decimal places even.
(There’s a whole ‘nother post in the sustained misery a fellow like…oh, say Dick Cheney would receive under similar circumstances, but I’ll leave the blatant, widespread media bias alone following this brief mention.)
Though we try to do a little more every year, we’re not huge givers. In fact, it wouldn’t be so hard for me to go through our budget and identify several expenses that are unambiguous luxuries. Is HD cable really more important that children’s cancer? Than disaster relief? Than shelters for battered women? Most anyone reading this could probably say similar things.
Yet percentage to percentage, we pasted the Bidens last year. Know what else? We even beat them dollar for dollar. Now I’m not going to tell you what I made in 2008, but rest assured it was well short of $269,256. (Despite what you’ve seen on TV and in the movies, the real life of a technical writer is not all hookers, blow, and private jet jaunts to the Caymans.)
When questioned about it, Joe has always been careful to explain that they give of their time as well.
Hey Joe? Us too.
What the hell?
It’s less scary to believe they’re just heartless stingy self-absorbed cheap thrifty. The graver possibility is that their pathetic level of charitable giving says something about what they think Mommy Government ought to be doing for people, which just might be everything but wiping their asses (as of this writing, anyway). Will this administration get away with its stated wish of capping deductions on charitable contributions? Have you heard anyone affiliated with a charity call such a proposal anything but a disaster?
Charity is voluntary giving. Taxes are involuntary confiscation.
Now obviously, I am not privy to the Bidens’ personal finances. I do know, however, that as of January 20, their day-to-day expenses dropped pretty much to zero. Plus, Joe got a raise. Finally, it got a lot tougher for either of them to head down to the homeless shelter, or to a Habitat site for some framing, or whatever the hell they’ve supposedly been doing to feel better/deflect criticism concerning their inability to write a damned check once in a while.
Bidens, y’all step up in 2009.
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pretty sad commentary on the state of “charitable” giving in this country when the leaders’ bottom line looks like this. maybe my wife and I are pretty foolish about this, but we don’t actually report our charitable contributions to get a write off. I’m not trying to “toot my own horn”, but it just kind of makes me feel like I’m not giving the contribution for the right reason if I get a tax write off for it…or something like that. Perhaps the Bidens did the same thing….nah, probably not.
Bigdave: I think the question is whether you would give the contribution whether you got to deduct it or not, and I strongly suspect the answer in your case is yes. That being the case, why not take it? The system is what it is.
What drives me nuts about Obama floating a proposal to cap deductions is that it really will have a negative effect, and I suspect it will be those who give the most who will curtail the most. A dollar is a dollar to a charity no matter why it’s given.
‘Course, might this be an unstated “benefit,” in this administration’s mind? After all, a charity shouldn’t do anything that the federal government can do a quarter as well and at ten times the cost, right?