Michael Bennet, Andrew Romanoff believe in taxing you, not personal charity

Over the last 10 to 12 years, appointed Obama Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet and his challenger, Andrew Romanoff, often have not given any money to charity even though they believe in forcing middle income and upper income Americans to “contribute to society” by paying higher and higher taxes.

Their hypocrisy is remarkable.

Here are two hard left Democrats who 

want Americans to pay higher taxes and want to redistribute income but don’t believe in sharing their wealth above and beyond what they have to pay in taxes. 

Romanoff not only is stingy with the poor, he’s stingy with himself. He obviously doesn’t care much more about making money than he cares about letting taxpayers keep their money and decide how to spend it and redistribute it to charitable organizations. In Romanoff’s perfect world, everyone would pay 70% of their incomes in taxes and let power hungry politicians like him decide who should benefit from the “government’s charity.”

While money is not important to Romanoff, power is. He knows that as long as he works for one governmental agency or another, he’ll be paid more than his peers in the private sector, and his health and retirement benefits will be more generous than those of people who are in the private sector. The Post reported that Romanoff said he’s made unreported charitable contributions because “he didn’t have enough other deductions to make a difference in his tax deductions.” Fair enough, that happens.

The point is that Bennet and Romanoff don’t really believe in contributing to religious organizations or other charities, although Bennet’s gifts have increased over the years for whatever reasons. Although Republicans Jane Norton and Ken Buck have released detailed lists of the organizations that they have contributed to, Bennet and Romanoff apparently fear that disclosing such information will embarrass them politically.

For many liberal voters and some conservatives, that’s fine. That’s their business. But this is a religious and generous country, and it remains to be seen whether the values shown in Bennet’s and Romanoff’s tax returns are those that will impress voters this year.

The other huge question, of course, is whether voters are impressed that Romanoff has been so focused on political power that he has neglected not only his personal life but also his personal responsibility to people. Romanoff obviously is one of those people who takes pride in not caring about money. But his critics will say that by not exploiting his money-earning potential, Romanoff has avoided paying what his liberal friends consider his “fair share” of income and other taxes. He’s focused on himself and his political career so much that he hasn’t earned enough to give to worthy charities. 

And down the road, if Romanoff continues to be an under achiever, he’ll find himself in a financial bind of some kind. And he’ll expect taxpayers and relatives to bail him out. A lot of voters will decide that Romanoff’s values are not theirs. They’ll realize that he in no way empathizes with them, shares few of their goals and ambitions and is all about him, not them. 

If Romanoff wasn’t running against Obama Democrat Bennet, he’s be considered the perfect Obama Democrat.

LINKs:

For Democratic rivals in U.S. Senate race, a stark difference in earnings. By Michael Booth.

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