Americans Give More Than Others

It was a little galling to hear the Democrat's presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, tell Rick Warren that "America's greatest moral failure in my lifetime has been that we don't abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me."No other country in the world gives as much as Americans give. On a per capita basis, Americans give 3.5 times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Americans are 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss and 32 percent more likely than the Germans.Not content to merely insult us periodically, the senator has sponsored legislation called the Global Poverty Act which would result in the imposition of a tax on Americans in order to reduce poverty in other countries by 50 percent by the year 2013. The bill ties levels of our foreign aid spending to the priorities of the United Nations. Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.'s Millennium Project, confirms this legislation is tied to a U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay an additional $65 billion per year to what our taxes already send overseas. Does the senator really fail to understand that the funds for these programs all too frequently wind up in the hands of dictators and in the U.N. coffers? Maybe it is because of this kind of legislation that the Democrat-controlled Congress has historically low single-digit approval ratings. Before the senator presumes to lecture us, he should practice what he preaches. The Chicago Tribune reported that in 2002, the Obamas had an income of $259,394 which ranked them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households. That year the Obamas only donated $1,050 to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income. The average U.S. household in that year gave $1,872 in gifts to charity, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The national average for charitable giving is 2.2 percent of household income. Obama's tax returns from 1997 until he arrived in Washington in 2005 fell well below that benchmark.It is not surprising that the senator reverts so easily to condemning Americans because he was surely influenced after spending nearly his entire adult life listening to the anti-American and racist rantings of his pastor, Rev. Wright. But for someone who is asking for our vote, it is unforgivable that he sneers at us while conveniently forgetting that Americans are the most charitably generous people in the world. Apparently the senator's theme: "Change we can believe in" is really "Believing we should give more change."Before the senator continues to further push his class warfare themes, he should remember the words of America's favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, who said this about class warfare: "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Mary Beth Seaha