Clinton reportedly backed tax breaks for charities

Then-first lady Hillary Clinton reportedly endorsed tax breaks for private charities while solicitations for her husband’s presidential library were still ongoing.

Clinton, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, backed a White House plan for tax relief while the William J. Clinton Foundation was seeking contributions, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.

It said they showed Hillary Clinton signed “HRC” and “OK” on a January 2000 memo concerning a “philanthropy tax initiative roll-out.”

{mosads}The document — stamped with the archive designation “HRC handwriting” — was originally issued in the final year of former President Bill Clinton’s second term, the AP said.

It added that the tax package in question included language for reducing and simplifying an excise tax on private foundations’ investments. It also would have permitted more tax deductions for charitable donations of appreciated property.

“Without your leadership, none of these proposals would have been included in the tax package,” three aides wrote to Hillary Clinton in the memo.

The Clinton administration attempted to add the tax package to its final budget proposed in February 2000, but the measures did not survive scrutiny by a GOP-led Congress.

Federal law does not forbid fundraising for a presidential library during an active president’s term.

But the AP found no documents expressing concerns over a potential conflict of interest between the Clintons and lawmakers examining the tax legislation.

Tax disclosures revealed that the Clinton Foundation had already raised $6 million in February 2000 before the tax package appeared before Congress, the AP said.

“The theme here for the Clintons is a characteristic ambiguity of doing good and, at the same time, doing well by themselves,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota.

Jacobs said the Clintons could have publicly supported tax code changes without supporting specific plans.

They also could have let a federal commission decide the issue instead, he added.

Bruce Reed, Bill Clinton’s chief domestic policy adviser at the time, argued on Thursday that the former president simply had American charities in his mind when pitching the plan.

He “wanted to give a break to working people for putting a few more dollars in the plate at church,” Read said. “Not for any other far-fetched reason.”

Gene Sperling, former economic adviser to both Bill Clinton and President Obama, added on Thursday that the tax plan was also “developed at the Treasury Department, endorsed by experts and designed to encourage all forms of charitable giving.”