Ex-aide says faith-based giving ignored

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- A former White House official says "widespread congressional apathy and a desire for political gamesmanship" doomed the president's tax incentives for charitable giving.

In testimony prepared for a hearing on charities, David Kuo, former deputy director at the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, also criticized Republican efforts to repeal the estate tax because of its potential drain on charitable giving.
.....
Kuo said there's no topic more ignored by political leaders than "matters of charity, of care for the poor" because they don't have a powerful lobbying force.

"They aren't likely to flood your office with calls, e-mails or letters and yet there are more poor Americans today than there were four years ago," he said.

Kuo also said estimates show that a full repeal of the estate tax could cost the charitable sector more than $10 billion each year. The estate tax leads wealthy individuals to contribute to charities because the donations reduce their estate tax liability.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/04/ex_aide_says_faith_based_giving_ignored/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. "The estate tax leads wealthy individuals to contribute to charities

because the donations reduce their estate tax liability." Hey, how about because the donations HELP THE POOR? Or isn't that a good anough reason?

Guess not....

[MrModerate]

2. Nope, it doesn't work that way . . .

Which is why the Estate Tax is good social policy and eliminating it yet another damaging sop tossed to the rich.

People do give because they want to help those less fortunate than themselves, but the Estate Tax tie-in to charitable giving encourages them to give more. Quite a bit more

But the natural human impulse is to hang onto wealth -- even into the grave (ask the Pharoahs), the side effect of which is that it gets passed onto the next generation. And one highly negative consequence of this is that "family fortunes" get bigger and bigger and wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. These monolithic fortunes increasingly become a bat to beat the rest of us with.

This is all part of a push by the uber-rich (a plan that's been in effect since they first coined money, I believe) to increase the divide between themselves and the rest of the population to such an extent that they can literally do whatever they want.