When I wrote “Giving Obama His Due,” I based by story on this year’s income tax return.

A Tuesday story entitled, “For Obama, charity really began in the U.S. Senate,” by the Chicago Tribune’s Bob Secter today makes it clear that I may have offered too much credit.

Secter looked at income tax forms for both U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and Barack (note that I spelled it correctly this time without being reminded) Obama going back to 1997.

Obama’s contributions in 1997 appear to be a bit less than 1% of income, with $400 to his church. Durbin’s were a bit below 2%. Secter notes the national average is 2.2%.

The Biblical admonition is a minimum of 10%, the tithe.

Both politicians had increased their contributions to about 4½% by 2005.

Obama, as I calculated earlier, gave 6.1% to charities last year. Secter does note that Obama contributed just 4/10ths of one percent of his income–$1,050 as recently as 2002.

The recent ramp-up lets Obama avoid the 1998 ridicule of ridicule of Al Gore for contributing only $353.

Secter reports that Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ “encourages its members to donate 10 percent of their income…from 1997 through 2002, the Obamas reported devoting less than 1 percent of their household income to charity.”

While reporting the contributions and total income of President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the Tribune article left the calculations to the reader. Cheney was at 6.5%, while Bush gave 10.2%.

McHenry County Blog reported the 10.2% figure in a story comparing Bush’s percentage with Mayor Richard Daley’s.