Yesterday, President Obama gave his American Jobs Act proposal a Rose Garden send off to Capitol Hill.

We at the Orthodox Union have noted that the proposal includes provisions that can provide important benefits to the non-profit and charitable sector which include making grants to modernize school building s available to non-public and parochial schools (for some purposes) and structuring tax credits to employers who hire unemployed people or raise thesalaries of their existing employees available to tax-exempt non-profits.

But we must also note that the President has proposed to offset some of the budgetary cost of the Jobs Act by (among other things) reducing the rate of tax deductability for charitable contributions.

This is not the first time President Obama has suggested such a thing; we – along with the entire charitable sector – have objected to it each time, and we will oppose it now again.

Non-profits continue to suffer from the recession and now – or any time in the near term – is not the time to put a damper on charitable giving.