Rosemary Parker at the Kalamazoo Gazette has the details:

Individual taxpayers will take the brunt of the changes, of course, but food banks, public universities, foundations and other nonprofits could suffer when the tax credit on donations disappears.

“In Michigan it has been a sweet deal, a dollar-for-dollar credit on the Michigan return,” Powers explained.
Currently, for a married couple filing jointly, a $400 gift to an eligible charity gets a Michigan tax credit of $200. Add the federal deduction, and the actual cost of that $400 gift is just $76.

“While I couldn’t tell you how many take the credit, it is indicative that many plan to by the amount of their gift,” said Theresa Bray, executive director of the Allegan County Community Foundation.

Under the new law, the cost of that $400 contribution will now be $276. The tax changes will decrease business taxes by $1.6 billion next year, making up for it by increasing the amount paid as personal income tax.

A review by The New York Times of federal tax records and House and Senate disclosure reports found at least two dozen charities that lawmakers or their families helped create or run that routinely accept donations from businesses seeking to influence them. The sponsors — AT&T, Chevron, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley, Eli Lilly and dozens of others — contribute millions of dollars annually in gifts ranging from token amounts to a check for $5 million.

Since 2009, businesses have sent lobbyists and executives to the plush Boulders resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a fund-raiser for the scholarship fund of Representative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana; sponsored a skeet shooting competition in Florida to help the favorite food bank of Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida; and subsidized a spa and speedway outing in Las Vegas to aid the charity of Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada.

Just last month, they touted their largess with flags bearing their names near the tees at a golf tournament benefiting the foundation of Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.

While the donations can’t be used by lawmakers to directly influence their reelection, the money often get funneled into their state or district in various forms, like scholarships, that benefit their constituents. Likewise, while many business executives claim they simply want to benefit a good cause, their contributions — which are sometimes not disclosed — often end up benefiting their corporations as well:

Altria, the cigarette maker, for example, sent at least $45,000 in donations over a six-week period last fall to four charitable programs founded by House members — including Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, and Mr. Clyburn, the Democratic whip — just as the company was seeking approval of legislation intended to curb illegal Internet sales of its cigarettes. An Altria spokesman said the donations were not related to the measure, which all four congressmen backed. (The other two are Mr. Boyd and Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan.)

Twice last year the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated lawmakers’ charities, but in each case it ultimately took no action. This was in no small part due to the fact that the House granted waivers exempting the politicians in question from prohibitions against receiving donations from companies with business before their committees.

I happened to be in Dearborn, Mich., the oldest Arab-American community in the U.S., working on a story shortly after Bush gave that statement, and practically every Muslim I spoke with brought it up — usually unprompted — to discuss, with great anguish, how it implicitly drove a wedge between their Islamic and American identities. Such alienation — in the name of fighting terrorism! — was not merely at odds with American values, it irresponsibly invited millions of Muslims living as productive American citizens to turn their backs on their country. It didn’t treat U.S. Muslims as an at-risk population that needed protection from extremists; it treated them as potential targets of government harassment, presuming their unproven guilt. David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency scholar-practitioner, has written an eloquent book about the consequences of such a mistake.

President Obama delivers his speech in Cairo (White House photo)

In Cairo today, Obama sought to fix that mistake, singling out the polyglot, internally diverse American Muslim communities as an exhibit in his broader narrative of U.S.-Islamic harmony. And in doing so, he called out the anti-Islamic bigots in America. Al-Qaeda’s provocations “led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights,” he said. “So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity.” He might have been talking about the Fox News primetime lineup. Glenn Beck, of course, is nowhere near as dangerous or as virulent as Osama bin Laden, but for the U.S. to act as if it’s blameless in the post-9/11 divisions between the U.S. and the Islamic world is irresponsible and counterproductive.

Something that’s going to go undernoticed in the speech is that Obama indicated he’ll relax Bush-era restrictions on Muslim charitable giving:

Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

A lot of work is going to need to go into establishing what exactly Obama means here. Some U.S. Muslim charities have been convicted of funneling money to terrorist organizations, primarily against Israel. Some of the cases, however, have apparently been created on the basis of illegal surveillance, as lawyers for the Al-Haramain charity contest. The issue, however, speaks directly to whether the government will compel American Muslims to choose between different aspects of their identity or embrace them as American citizens.

Obama has given his answer, telling the Muslim world that it shares with the U.S. a tradition of “justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” It was fitting, then, for Obama to reference Ellison — and implicitly rebuke Ellison’s detractors — in a brief passage:

When the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library.

Ellison’s oath-swearing was the subject of a brief but intense right-wing fury. Obama’s speech sought to put an end to the whole ugly era in which the election of a Muslim to high office is viewed as anything other than a testament to the promise of America.