Marathon Pundit: The Audacity of the Obamas: They're charity cheapskates

The Obamas come off better than Al Gore did in 1998 when the then-vice president and his wife reported donating just $353 in charity for the prior tax year, but Barack and Michelle Obama, according to the the Chicago "free registration required" Tribune, are pretty stingy themselves when it comes to charitable giving.

On their just-filed 2006 tax return, Obama and his wife, a hospital administrator, reported taxable income of $983,626 and claimed deductions for $60,307 in charitable donations. In 2005 they earned a combined $1.65 million and gave away about $77,300.

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.

In all kinds of ways, Senator Obama's membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ continues to be a to be a problem for him. As I've mentioned several times on this blog, the title of Obama's best selling book, The Audacity of Hope, comes from a sermon given by the controversial pastor of the church, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

More from the Tribune:

The Obamas are members of Trinity United Church of Christ. The South Side congregation encourages its members to tithe 10 percent of their income, according to a church spokeswoman. The Obamas clearly fell short of that goal, their tax returns indicate.