Bushes, Cheneys Release Charitable-Giving Data

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have released information about their charitable giving last year.

President Bush and the first lady, Laura Bush, gave $82,700 to churches and charities last year, 11.6 percent of their taxable income of $711,453.

Vice President Cheney and Lynne Cheney donated $79,275 to charity, about 1.8 percent of their taxable income of $4.3-million.

The White House said that the Bushes made their gifts last year to a variety of nonprofit organizations, including unnamed organizations that provided assistance in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks; Tarrytown United Methodist Church, in Austin, Tex.; Evergreen Chapel, where religious services are held at the Camp David presidential retreat; and Southern Methodist University, Mrs. Bush’s alma mater. The White House did not say how much money the Bushes contributed to specific organizations.

The Cheneys donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross last year, the amount Mrs. Cheney received as an advance for her forthcoming book, America: A Patriotic Primer. The White House did not identify the charitable organizations to which the Cheneys donated the remaining $29,275.

The charitable donations that the Bushes made last year are significantly less than they provided the previous two years -- $143,300 in 2000 and $210,000 in 1999. In those years, the family contributed a total of $205,000 in royalties from the president’s book, A Charge to Keep, which was published in 1999.

Two years ago Mr. and Mrs. Bush released tax records to The Chronicle of Philanthropy that detailed their charitable gifts from 1991 to 1998 (The Chronicle, April 6, 2000). In those years, the Bushes gave from about 2 percent to slightly under 16 percent of their taxable income to charity. The smallest sum was $9,178 in 1995 and the largest was $334,425 in 1998, the year that Mr. Bush received income from the sale of the Texas Rangers baseball team.