Bush Gives Tsunami Victims From 14.6% of His Heart

Crossposted at Dark Days Ahead....

President Bush gave $10,000 of his own money today, according to the White House Press Secretary. Does this mean he's finally seeing the light on the significance of this disaster? Let's put this in perspective with some information from President and Laura Bush's tax returns:

2003 total income pdf: $822,126
2003 donations: $68,360 "to churches and charitable organizations, including Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, Tarrytown United Methodist Church, St. John's Church, the M.D. Anderson Clinic, and the Federal Government's Combined Federal Campaign."

2002 total income pdf: $856,058
2002 donations: $69,925 "to churches and charitable organizations, including Southern Methodist University, Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, Tarrytown United Methodist Church, and the Federal Government's Combined Federal Campaign."

2001 total income pdf: $811,100
2001 donations: $82,700 to churches and charitable organizations, including Tarrytown United Methodist Church, Evergreen Chapel (Camp David Church), Southern Methodist University, September 11th-related funds, and a variety of other charities.

Using the low figure for donations in the past three years, this $10,000 trumpeted by the White House Press Secretary represents 14.6% of what the Bushes usually give. Using the high figure for donations in the last three years, which is probably fairer given that the 9-11 disaster happened that year, this $10,000 represents 12.1% of what the Bushes gave.

Now, to be fair, I haven't given as much as 1.2% percent of my income from last year yet, so I'm open to charges of hypocrisy. Then again, I didn't make $401,803 in taxable interest last year. Maybe he could have found some other way to give a little more than 1.2% of his income from last year in order to help people deal with their entire families and towns being wiped out. Perhaps President Bush could have short shrifted Southern Methodist University or the Evergreen Chapel at Camp David this year in order to give a little bit more to thousands of orphaned children.

Or perhaps, God forbid, he could have given a little more from his 7 to 19 millions of dollars of personal wealth. The largest human catastrophe in recent memory, and a multimilionaire with hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in interest income alone can't come up with more than $10,000?

The next time they want to want to brag about the President's compassion to the press, maybe they ought to make sure it's not conservative compassion first.