Obama's Threat to Charities and Universities: His Budget and Taxes
By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville identified as one of this country's great strengths Americans' propensity to form voluntary associations. It remains one of America's great strengths today, one which distinguishes us from every other nation. But it is under attack from the Obama administration. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
The tax increases would raise an estimated $318 billion over 10 years by reducing the value of such longstanding deductions as mortgage interest and charitable contributions for people in the highest tax brackets. Households paying income taxes at the 33% and 35% rates can currently claim deductions at those rates. Under the Obama proposal, they could deduct only 28% of the value of those payments.
Reducing the value of the charitable deduction is a threat to voluntary associations. For worthy commentary, check out Jennifer Rubin of Commentary and, on videotape she links to, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and this reaction in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
This is an attempt to channel money away from voluntary associations and direct it to the state. Some of that money, in turn, would be directed to public employee unions, and much if not most of that would be directed to the Democratic Party. It would be interesting to know what White House counselor and former President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers thinks of this.
One of the strengths of American society is that we do not rely solely on the government to address social problems. Because of our vast network of voluntary associations, of charities and foundations and universities and nonprofits, we address social problems in a wide variety of ways. We can examine what works and what doesn't work; we have competition in the marketplace of ideas and good works. We have faith-based and proudly secular voluntary associations, market-oriented and statist-oriented voluntary associations, research-oriented and service-oriented voluntary associations.
Barack Obama evidently wants us to shift vast sums of money from the voluntary associations extolled by Alexis de Tocqueville to the bureaucratic networks described by Max Weber. This is a profoundly bad idea. I will be interested to see whether nonprofits dependent on major gifts, like our great universities, take this in stride or whether they see it, as I do, as a threat to their institutions. People who make their livings working for nonprofit institutions almost surely voted heavily for Barack Obama. Do they really think it's a good idea to siphon money away from their states in order to enrich the public employee unions? Is that a step forward for American society? Max Weber might have thought so. Alexis de Tocqueville surely would not have.
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Tags: federal taxes | federal budget | philanthropy | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
Charitable Abuses
One thing that always bothered me concerning tax deductions for charitable organizations -
The ability of Foundations, Charitable Trust, and Bill's Presidential Library & Global Slush Fund, to collect huge sums of money, invest it tax-free, and have to distribute only a minuscule of annual investment returns.
They can pay themselves and family members hundreds of thousands or millions of $$'s to manage, direct, or sit on the board.
Pay for travel and expenses to philanthropic investment seminars all over the world.
Buy houses around the world as investment properties
(Don Imus's Charitable Ranch for Children in New Mexico, which he flies out to from NY with his family on private jet on Holidays just to check up on things. The guest children only visit the ranch for a couple of weeks in the summer.)
Granted, most Foundations and Trust do wonderful things, but to become a personal family tax-exempt hedge fund is an abuse to the rest of those citizens who pay taxes.
Obama robs the poor and lines his pockets
Conservatives take care of the poor, liberals are scrooges that pay the poor lip-service. That's why Biden and Gore got caught giving little and nothing to charity.
Obama's the same brand. He will rob the poor box of churches and charities so that he can pay off his socialist pals, his bureaucrat tax cheat friends, his 'boy-friends and girl-friends' in the news media, the abortionists at Planned Parenthood, and his racist friends...and he'll keep doing it...until "white is right."
Obama and his change
If you voted for him you deserve what you get. When all a person want's to talk about is change but want say what the change is common since says stay away from it. Any fool knows when you stop being able to deduct from taxes for chairtable giving that it will do severe damage to the country. But there again why should the government be able to take from one family that works to get ahead in life and give it to someone else that don't try.
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