Obama stingy; Clinton not

Boy, I wouldn't have figured this: Barack and Michelle Obama have been far less generous in their charitable giving than Bill and Hillary Clinton have been. Today the Clinton campaign released the Clintons' tax returns: they gave about 10 percent of their income to charity since 2000. By contrast, the Obamas gave only 1 percent of their income from 2000 to 2004. In 2005 and 2006, they gave 5 percent of their income.

The Clintons tithe. The Obamas don't. Yes, it's a lot easier to give proportionately more when you've made $109 million in eight years, but don't for a second think that the Obamas were scraping to make ends meet. They made more money per annum in their reporting period than most Americans. Yet they were proportionately far less generous than the Clintons. That surprises me.

UPDATE: Here's something from a National Review Online piece about charitable giving:

According to 2000 data from the Independent Sector (a trade group for nonprofit organizations), among people with above-average incomes who do not give charitably, a majority actually say it is because they don’t have enough money.

You’d think that the only Americans with the nerve to use such an excuse for not giving would be the poor. But in fact, it is the poor — specifically the working poor — who can most teach upper-class misers a charity lesson. The working poor are America’s most generous givers when we measure giving as a percentage of income. Most studies have shown that the working poor tend to give away between four and five percent of their incomes, on average, while the rich give away between three and four percent. (Both groups give away significantly more than the middle class.)

More from a 2007 Chicago Tribune story on the stingy Obamas:

In 2002, the year before Obama launched his campaign for U.S. Senate, the Obamas reported income of $259,394, ranking them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households, according to Census Bureau statistics. That year the Obamas claimed $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income. The average U.S. household totaled $1,872 in gifts to charity in 2002, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The national average for charitable giving has long hovered at 2.2 percent of household income, according to the Glenview-based Giving USA Foundation, which tracks trends in philanthropy. Obama tax returns dating to 1997 show he fell well below that benchmark until 2005, the year he arrived in Washington.

Well, the Obamas improved their charitable giving, bless their hearts. But as Democratic consultant Chris Lehane said:

"For a Democrat in particular, given that they tend to be professing a 'we, not me' message, it's always an opportunity to step on the third rail if your charitable contributions don't stack up," Lehane said.

Then again, lest we wonder about why the working poor give on average 4 percent of their income to charity, but the Obamas, when they were in the top 2 percent of wage earners, managed to give less than a quarter of that, let's not forget that Mrs. Obama had her priorities:

“I know we’re spending — I added it up for the first time — we spend between the two kids, on extracurriculars outside the classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements and so on and so forth,” Mrs. Obama tells the women. “And summer programs. That’s the other huge cost. Barack is saying, ‘Whyyyyyy are we spending that?’ And I’m saying, ‘Do you know what summer camp costs?’”

UPDATE.2: Wick Allison notes in the comboxes:

Please note, Rod, that the Clintons gave the bulk of their "charitable donations" to the Clinton Foundation, which may or may not (we don't know) pay Bill Clinton a salary, but which certainly covers all their expenses. It's a nice racket allowed by the tax code; the Dreher family ought to try it.

Oooh, nice.