As published for The Washington Post on February 5th, 2010:

Former community organizer Barack Obama once seemed to recognize the important role of community institutions. It was among his few credible claims to ideological outreach. On the eve of his inauguration, cameras in tow, Obama took a paint roller to the walls of a D.C. homeless shelter. He retained the White House office that promotes community and faith-based charities. In June, during a speech saluting nonprofits, he said, “Solutions to America’s challenges are being developed every day at the grass roots. And government shouldn’t be supplanting those efforts, it should be supporting those efforts.”

But alliteration carries little weight in the budget process (to the disappointment of speechwriters everywhere). For the second budget in a row, President Obama has proposed to reduce the tax deductions on donations by the wealthy, making it about 10 percent more costly for them to give to charity — and gaining the federal government about $300 billion in revenue over 10 years.

The public justification for this tax increase is fairness. The budget reads: “Currently, if a middle-class family donates a dollar to its favorite charity or spends a dollar on mortgage interest, it gets a 15-cent tax deduction, but a millionaire who does the same enjoys a deduction that is more than twice as generous.” In the last budget season, Obama argued this tax increase would “equalize” a disparity and “raise some revenue from people who benefited enormously over the past several years.”

Read the full article here