GOP Leader Opposes Charitable-Deduction Cap

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, has criticized the Obama administration’s proposal to limit federal tax breaks that wealthy people can get for their itemized deductions for donations to charity.

To help pay for a plan to reshape the country’s health-care system, President Obama wants to limit the federal tax breaks that wealthy people can get for their itemized deductions, including donations to charity, starting in 2011.

“With a challenged economy already causing endowments at colleges and universities, charities, museums, and other nonprofits to shrivel up, the last thing America’s nonprofit organizations expected was for the administration to introduce another disincentive to charitable giving,” Senator McConnell said on the Senate floor yesterday.

Mr. McConnell noted that a recent report showed that college and university endowments lost more than 20 percent of their value in a recent five-month period largely as a result of the decline in the stock market.