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Obama's giving doesn't match talking


Would you rather vote for a president who would give you the white oxford shirt off his back? Or do you prefer the tight-fisted guy who wouldn't give a cane to a blind man if he owned a lumber yard?

All three candidates for president sound like Mother Teresa when they talk about helping the poor. But what do they actually do about it? Do they give until it hurts? Or do they have alligator arms that can't reach their kangaroo pockets?

Thanks to their tax returns, we can get a pretty good idea. And it turns out that the biggest talker is the cheapest giver.

That's Barack Obama. The "community organizer" talks about "our empathy deficit." He told the Chicago Tribune we need to pay more attention to "the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room."

Things must have been pretty cushy for Obama at Harvard. I never had any immigrant women cleaning my dorm room in college. I can honestly say that nobody cleaned it.

But how does Obama back up his talk? In 2007, the Obamas earned $4.2 million.

They donated about $240,000. That's 6 percent - well above the national average of 2.2 percent.

But in 2005, he donated 4 percent. And in 2001 and 2002, the Obamas gave less than half of 1 percent. One of his biggest donations in 2006 was to Trinity United Methodist Church - home of the Rev. Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright.

In the past two years, the Tribune reported, the Obamas gave to reading programs, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Muntu Dance Theatre and international aid.

Bill and Hillary Clinton grudgingly released tax returns under pressure from Obama. There were no embarrassments like their tax returns from Arkansas, when they took deductions for donating used underwear ($2) and used socks ($9).

Since 2000, the Clintons earned $109 million and donated $10.2 million - 10 percent.

The Bush years have been very good to the Clintons. They made millions from book deals and speaking fees that gave seizures to liberals when Ronald Reagan "cashed in." They went from $416,000 in 2000 to an average of $13.6 million per year since then.

Ten percent to charity is generous. But nearly all of it went to the Clinton Family Foundation, which has been accused of hiding shady donations to the Clinton Library, paying salaries to Clinton friends and making gifts to buy endorsements for Hillary. The Washington Post reported: "The foundation has enabled the Clintons to write off more than $5 million from their taxable personal income since 2001, while dispensing only $1.25 million in charitable contributions over that period."

John McCain's wife, Cindy, owns businesses worth more than $100 million, but they file separate tax returns and hers have not been released, so it is impossible to make a direct comparison to Obama and Clinton. On his income of $405,409, he donated $105,467 in 2007.

That's 25 percent of his income. The year before, he gave 26 percent.

From 2001 to 2006, they donated $950,000 to the McCain Family Foundation, and it gave away $1.6 million. Private schools got $500,000.Harper's sniped, "McCain apparently received major tax deductions for supporting elite schools attended by his children." But many parents spend on private schools while also paying taxes for public schools.

Last year, the McCain Family Foundation's biggest donations went to Operation Smile (facial surgery for poor children) and for removal of land mines.

Since 1991, McCain has donated all his Senate pay raises to charity, totaling $450,000; since 1998, he has donated $1.8 million in book royalties.

Tax returns don't show how the Obamas and Clintons advocate for the poor. But it's easy to spend other people's money. The test of character is how you spend your own.

Arthur Brooks, author of "Who Really Cares," found that conservatives are 30 percent more generous than liberals: "You find that people who believe it's the government's job to make incomes more equal are far less likely to give their money away."

Clinton and Obama talk a lot about raising taxes to help the poor. But if the definition of character is what you do when nobody's watching, they didn't do much. And the definition of that is hypocrisy.