Bidens report giving fraction of income to charity
WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic nominee for vice president, and his wife reported giving a fraction of 1 percent of their income to charity during the past decade, below the national average, tax records show.
A Biden spokesman said the couple has given more to charity than they claimed on their taxes.
Biden and his wife, Jill, earned $319,853 in adjusted gross income and paid $72,787 in federal taxes last year, including $2,721 in alternative minimum taxes. They claimed $995 in deductions for charitable giving, about triple what they deducted in any of the nine previous years. Over the past decade they reported giving an average of $369 to charity.
Their deductions for charitable giving - about two-tenths of 1 percent of their income - is lower than the national average of about 3.1 percent, according to JustGive.org, a nonprofit organization that connects donors with charities.
Biden spokesman David Wade said the deductions on the tax forms "are not the sum of their annual contributions to charity." The Bidens "contribute to their church, and they also contribute to their favorite causes." He said the Bidens also do volunteer work with military families and for other causes.
Biden is the least wealthy US senator, according to an analysis of financial disclosure records by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington research group.
The Bidens' giving represents a smaller portion of their income than the $353 then-vice president Al Gore was criticized for donating on an income of $197,729 in 1997.
Biden's running mate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, are millionaires. Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican vice presidential nominee, hasn't released her tax returns.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Hatch defends Obama from 'ridiculous' charges
NEW YORK - Senator Orrin Hatch, a conservative Utah Republican, yesterday defended Barack Obama from what Hatch called "ridiculous" charges that Obama had insulted GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin with the use of an age-old expression, "lipstick on a pig."
"I think it's ridiculous, what they've said about Sarah Palin," Hatch said, referring to criticisms of her fitness for the White House. But to suggest that Democratic nominee Obama was calling Palin a "pig?" Just as silly, Hatch said.
"I think it's ridiculous to make too much of Barack Obama [and his comments about the McCain campaign message]. I'm sure he didn't mean it that way, the way it's being interpreted," Hatch said in a brief interview after he formally announced a sweeping national service bill he authored with his Democratic friend and colleague, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
While Hatch said he is committed to electing GOP nominee John McCain, "Barack Obama is a nice person. He's smart; he's intelligent. He writes well. He's very charismatic." Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, who has served with Hatch for decades in the US Senate, is "a very fine human being," Hatch added.
SUSAN MILLIGAN
McCain stands by TV ads, makes false claim on Palin
NEW YORK - Republican presidential candidate John McCain yesterday defended two debunked television ads attacking Democrat Barack Obama and claimed erroneously that running mate Sarah Palin never sought money for lawmakers' pet projects as Alaska governor.
Palin sought $197 million in so-called "earmarks" for 2009. In the previous budget year, she asked for earmarks worth $256 million. McCain made the comments during a feisty grilling on ABC's "The View," where the panel of female hosts pressed him on Palin's religious views, his position on abortion rights and whether he had traded in his maverick ways to placate conservatives.
In Alaska, meanwhile, the investigator looking into whether Palin abused her power as governor in trying to fire her former brother-in-law asked state lawmakers for the power to subpoena Palin's husband, Todd, a dozen others and the phone records of a top aide. The state House and Senate judiciary committees were expected to grant the request.
McCain said that Palin had "ignited a spark" among voters but acknowledged they parted ways on certain issues. He has said human behavior is largely responsible for climate change and opposes drilling for oil in a federally protected refuge, for example.
McCain also appeared to back off a bit from saying Palin was the best vice presidential pick in US history when he joked, "We politicians are never given to exaggeration or hyperbole."
McCain stood by two of his campaign commercials - one that said Obama favored comprehensive sex education for kindergarten students and another that suggested Obama had called Palin a pig. Both are misleading and factually inaccurate.
Obama, as an Illinois state senator, voted for legislation that would teach age appropriate sex education to kindergartners. ASSOCIATED PRESS 