Obama proposes reducing the charitable deduction
In his recent Jobs Bill Obama has proposed funding the legislation by reducing the charitable deduction by about 30% for taxpayers in the top income brackets. If Obama truly wants the rich to help the needy why would he discourage affluent individuals who are most inclined and able to give by reducing the charitable deduction? His budget proposal only makes sense if you understand that to progressives like Obama the poor are constituents whose votes can be bought with government benefits. Therefore, private giving interferes with the government’s control of the money necessary to guarantee the continuing support of its most loyal followers.
Taxpayer money that could be funneled to loyal progressive organizations like ACORN and Organizing for America is, in their mind, wrongly diverted by the individuals who earned it to private charities that merely help the needy, but do nothing to support the Democrat Party. Any distribution of money by those who earned it to private charity reduces the government’s ability to reward its supporters and extend its control over those who are dependent on its favor.
In addition they believe that most affluent people are enemies to their cause, so it makes no sense to let them decide how to spend their own money. Taxation has the double benefit of taking resources out of the hands of opponents and giving money to a government that will use it to build its voter base. The progressive agenda that purports to be about helping the needy is upon closer examination about using the money of taxpayers to benefit its supporters and build its power.
The use of the public treasury to buy political support is an old, old strategy that could have been taken straight out of Julius Caesar’s playbook. Caesar represented himself as a man of the common people, and bought the Roman mob’s support by lavish distributions of public money. Caesar was a wealthy Patrician and his fellow Senators understood that this appeal to the mob had nothing to do with concern for ordinary people, but was a strategy to buy their support, to use them to concentrate all power in his own hands, and to eventually make himself King.
Caesar’s tradition of taking from wealthy Romans to build political support was continued by his heir, Octavian, who often killed opponents and used their money to consolidate power through gifts and favors. Together they brought down a republic that had lasted hundreds of years. Our founding fathers were aware of this history and warned against the use of public money for any purpose not related to projects designed to benefit the general welfare rather than particular groups or individuals.
The progressive opposition to allowing people to give their own money to charity arises from the same thinking that causes them to oppose school vouchers, home schooling, tax cuts to stimulate the economy, and private control of college loans. If people are allowed to spend their own money or control their own child’s education the government will lose the power to dictate who will be financially benefited or what “truth” will be taught to the young. Some progressives sincerely believe that “they know better” how to spend the peoples’ money than those who earned it, and others simply understand that they need other people’s money to build their power.
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