Is Obama actually hurting the poor?

Didn’t Pres. Obama campaign on helping the poor and middle class citizens in this country? We saw person after person telling their sad story and asking how the government is going to help. Well, I guess the answer is to decrease the amount donated to charities which the poor may rely upon.

Obama has now stated that he wants to reduce the deduction percentage for charitable giving for those “rich” couples making over $250,000. That may be a great way to bring more money into Washington, but at the expense of the people that he campaigned to help?

The Indiana University Center on Philanthropy sees a sizable negative impact from the proposal.

President Obama's tax proposals -- including a limit on charitable giving deductions that could be taken by America's wealthiest people -- could cause giving by America's wealthy to drop by several billion dollars a year, according to estimates released today by the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy.

The center looked at how the proposals Mr. Obama released on Thursday would have affected giving based on 2006 data showing how much taxpayers deducted for charitable contributions. It said that if Mr. Obama's tax plan had been in effect, Americans with incomes of $250,000 or more would have decreased their giving by 4.6 percent or nearly $3.9-billion. People at that income level claimed more than $81-billion in charitable gifts in 2006...

... In a statement, Patrick M. Rooney, interim director of the Indiana center, said he worried about the effect of the tax change at a time when the downturn in the economy has put a squeeze on many donors and the charities they support.

"Tax incentives do stimulate more giving," Mr. Rooney said, "and the challenges facing the nonprofit sector in 2009 suggest that this might be a good time to provide additional incentives, rather than reduce the value of the tax deduction for high-income households, so that the donors with the greatest capacity to give have more reasons to do so."