Partly Cloudy / 37° FSending the wrong message on charity
By Staff
This week, President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.33 trillion budget that proposes massive spending increases as well as massive tax increases over the coming years.
While most columnists will focus on those two items, I'm mostly concerned with a small provision in the budget that I feel is outrageous in this day and age.
Spending increases are inevitable. Tax increases are inevitable. But who would expect a president who campaigned on the themes of hope and change to hack away at charitable giving?
The Obama administration's budget includes a proposal to limit the value of deductions for charitable gifts, cutting off seven percent from the maximum level of deductions, from 35 percent to 28 percent for the wealthiest households.
Most people don't make charitable gifts for the tax benefits, myself included, but there are many who at least take it into account when deciding what to give. According to a 2006 Bank of America survey, 38 percent of respondents said their charitable giving would decrease if deductions were lowered.
I'm not concerned with the dollars and cents of it all. The greatest wrong in all of this is the message that it sends: That it is more important to give to the government than it is to give to charity.
Charitable organizations do great things in local, national and global communities. Look at some of the most recognizable non-profits: the Salvation Army, United Way, the American Red Cross – these groups were set up to help a segment that wasn't being helped enough by the federal government.
At the root of all of this is an unspoken effort to increase the influence of government at all levels. And since our lives and basic needs are finite, the only way to increase one entity's influence is to denigrate another's. In other words, the only way to strengthen government is to weaken charitable organizations.
During tough economic times, we need to encourage charitable giving, not make it less attractive. Non-profits have lower operating costs and more visible impact per dollar than the federal government, meaning more of a dollar I give to even a major national charity will actually benefit someone than a dollar I pay in taxes.
I was raised in a family that heavily supports charitable giving, and in my own household, we've continued that tradition. We've been blessed with success in our lives, and with that comes an unspoken obligation (but not a burden) to give back. Thankfully, most people also feel that obligation.
Unfortunately, there are also those who do not. Maybe it's vanity, maybe it's selfishness, or maybe it's just that they haven't yet found a cause that they feel strongly enough about – but some who have the means to give do not. My biggest fear is a gradual but dramatic shift in how we as a society feel about charitable giving that will inflate that segment and erode the majority of us who give.
Will we see a major shift right away in gifts to non-profits? Not necessarily. But what was once seen as a societal obligation – to help your neighbor in times of struggle -has already been eroded, and the Obama administration's proposal will weaken it even further. It won't be long before a cynical society begins to believe that there is no need to give to charity, because the government will take care of everyone. Guess what: It won't.
