During the March 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade falsely asserted that President Obama has proposed eliminating the ability of taxpayers to take income tax deductions for their charitable contributions. Kilmeade claimed that the Obama administration has proposed “getting rid of the deduction for charitable donations.” In fact, Obama has not proposed eliminating the charitable donation income tax deduction for any taxpayers. Rather, a provision in Obama's budget proposal would, beginning in fiscal year 2011, reduce the tax rate at which families earning more than $250,000 per year can take itemized deductions to 28 percent.

Kilmeade's false suggestion echoes a false claim made by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) without challenge during the March 1 edition of CNN's State of the Union and uncritically reported in a March 2 USA Today article.

From the March 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

RUDY GIULIANI (former New York City mayor): The original stimulus package was supposed to be an infrastructure package: 5 percent --

GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): Shovel-ready jobs.

GIULIANI: -- 5 percent for infrastructure, 95 percent for social programs that are debatable -- might help people, might not -- but this is not the time to be doing it, when -- it's like when your business is going down, you don't spend twice as much more money, you try to save money.

CARLSON: But I find what's fascinating this morning -- you asked where's the money going to come from? Now a report out this morning that maybe they're going to rethink taxing people again in all of this. So if they were going to raise $318 billion in 10 years by raising the income tax to 40 percent, they're not going to potentially get that money now. So, how are they going to pay for those programs?

GIULIANI: Well, I think what they're -- I think what they're focusing on is just the reality. This is not a Republican or Democratic reality. This is a reality John Kennedy understood. If they raise taxes, they're going to end up with less revenues for the government, because you're going to see people taking their money out of the United States, sheltering their money, not making as much money --

KILMEADE: It goes into metals.

GIULIANI: Absolutely right. You've got to stimulate the economy for this to work.

KILMEADE: And they might actually get rid of the -- getting rid of the deduction for charitable donations. They might rethink that, because charities will be decimated.

GIULIANI: Well, yeah. I mean, the idea that tax increases stimulate an economy is just dead wrong.