Back in January, I wrote about how leftists like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Al Gore, whose entire raison d’etre is to take wealth from those who earn it and use it to buy votes from those who don’t, are downright miserly with their own charitable contributions:
[Obama] donated only 1% of his income to charity last year. Same goes for Vice President Biden, who donated 1% of his income to charity in 2009 and 2010. That was an increase from the average of $369 per year that he donated over the previous ten years. I guess Messrs. Obama and Biden took their cues from then-Vice President Al Gore, who in 1997 donated all of $353 to charity.
By contrast, in the past two years Mitt Romney donated $7 million – 16% of his income – to charity.
Well, the results are in for 2011, and Vice President Biden once again donated a staggering 1.5 percent of his income to charity. By contrast, President Obama increased his charitable giving to an impressive 22% of his income. Looks like one of these guys is pretty motivated about getting reelected….
UPDATE: White House reporter Keith Koffler reports at his blog, White House Dossier, that Vice President Biden made nearly $21,000 from renting his property to the Secret Service to protect him:
Vice President Joe Biden last year earned $20,900 in rental income from the Secret Service, which is paying him to host agents on his property so they can protect him.
Most high-profile people in need of protection pay people to keep them safe. Government officials are allowed to have taxpayers pick up the tab. Biden is unique in that he actually gets paid by his bodyguards for the right to protect him.
The $21,000 that Biden was paid by the Secret Service for the privilege of putting their lives on the line to protect his is approximately four times the amount that Biden donated to charity last year out of his total income of over $379,000.
