Monday, September 15, 2008

Joe Biden's Charity

It turns out that Joe Biden’s years-long pattern of charitable giving is so low a percentage of his income that I can’t even manage the right number of zeroes after 0.0. According to Byron York, this is how the numbers broke down the year Biden declared $120 in charitable giving to the IRS:

To take Biden’s worst year, 1999, one percent of his adjusted gross income would have been $2,100. One half of one percent would have been $1,050. One quarter of one percent would have been $525. One eighth of one percent would have been $262. And one sixteenth of one percent would have been $131 — still a bit more than the Bidens gave.
Joe Biden and American Charity

Biden may explain this by pointing out that he gives at the office. His Senate office, that is. He’s giving somone else's money, taxpayer money, but he gives.

Isn’t that good enough?

The Left is going to be sorely tempted to try to dig up a similar poverty of charity in the Todd and Sarah Palin household, but that will be just another cigar exploding in the media’s face. If I know my evangelicals, her branch believes in tithing, which, strictly applied, starts at 10%–and that's 10% of gross income, not net. Had Biden done that in 1999, he would have donated at least $21,000, instead of $120.

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