I don’t want to pick on Joe Biden.

He seems a decent enough guy, and if he some­times says odd things (like “we to have spend mon­ey to keep from going bank­rupt”), his mus­ings are at least authen­tic expres­sions of his some­times con­fused state of mind.  He is not a phony.

Still, it is tax sea­son, with its annu­al reminder that the Vice Pres­i­dent makes a com­fort­able liv­ing ($385,072) and doesn’t pay what con­sid­ers his “fair share” in tax­es ($87,851 or 23% of his income).

I can’t fault him for that.  God knows, he’s done his best to raise tax­es, and to the extent that Repub­li­cans have blocked rate hikes and loop­hole-clos­ings, why shouldn’t he hire accoun­tants to assure that the gov­ern­ment gets as lit­tle as pos­si­ble of his wealth?  Though he often exco­ri­ates peo­ple like him­self, he is under no legal or moral oblig­a­tion to pay more in tax­es than the IRS requires.  The Vice Pres­i­dent has able accoun­tants.  Good for him.

What trou­bles me is that he gives so lit­tle to char­i­ty — $7,190 in 2012, or 1.87% of his income.   Unlike with tax­es, the Vice Pres­i­dent can’t blame Repub­li­cans for his mea­ger con­tri­bu­tions.   He and his wife are free to give as much as they want to their church or what­ev­er cause they think wor­thy.  Yet all they could muster from his vast troves of cash was $5,190, plus anoth­er $2,000 in used clothes, toys, exer­cise equip­ment, pot­tery and kitchen­ware that he gave to Good­will and anoth­er charity.

Mr. Biden is no doubt a man of decen­cy and com­pas­sion, as he often reminds us.  He is a leader of a polit­i­cal par­ty that, as he also tells us, is devot­ed to decen­cy and com­pas­sion.  This, he says, more than any­thing else, dis­tin­guish­es his par­ty from its polit­i­cal oppo­nents, who pur­sue poli­cies that aid the wealthy at the expense of the poor.  Repub­li­cans lack compassion.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, this is not your father’s Repub­li­can Par­ty. There is a brand-new cat out there,” he has said.

This “new cat” is very open in its dis­re­gard for the needs of the less for­tu­nate.  “Repub­li­cans are not hid­ing the ball. No more com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism. No more let’s rebuild pub­lic edu­ca­tion. No more let’s make sure every­body has access to health care. No more. No more talk about wom­en’s equal­i­ty and wom­en’s rights. No more. They’re say­ing exact­ly what they believe. So I think the choice will be stark.”

It’s not always easy to fol­low the Vice Pres­i­dent, par­tic­u­lar­ly when he ven­tures off his pre­pared remarks, as he appears to have done here.  He seems to be say­ing that ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions of Repub­li­cans (“your father’s Repub­li­can par­ty”) at least pre­tend­ed to care about the less for­tu­nate.  But now they no longer both­er even to “hide the ball” by feign­ing com­pas­sion.  They have bared their ugly souls.  No more pub­lic edu­ca­tion, no more health care, no more rights for women.  They have stripped con­ser­vatism of compassion.

But while neglect­ing the poor, Repub­li­cans are stri­dent advo­cates for the rich.  In defend­ing invest­ment bankers, they “sound like squeal­ing pigs.”   Their oppo­si­tion to the Administration’s pre­ferred Wall Street reg­u­la­to­ry regime has more­over unmasked their racism.   Repub­li­cans want to “put y’all back in chains,” he informed a pre­dom­i­nant­ly African-Amer­i­can audi­ence last year.

It should be said that Mr. Biden has not, to my knowl­edge, retract­ed these remarks.  Nor has his boss sought to dis­tance him­self from them.  This is his offi­cial view of the world: he and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty care about the poor; Repub­li­cans care only for the rich.  The dif­fer­ence between them, as he said, could not be more “stark.”

Indeed, he believes that he incar­nates the inter­ests of the non-wealthy.  He often reminds us of his hum­ble fam­i­ly back­ground and that, as a Sen­a­tor, he com­mut­ed from Delaware by train.  “I’m more at home in a train depot than any­where else,” he said. “Being in a train depot is where I, kind of where I lived most of my life.”

No longer.  It’s been years since the Vice Pres­i­dent has reg­u­lar­ly used the heav­i­ly sub­si­dized and unprof­itable Amtrak.  Since 2009, he has lived a pam­pered and shel­tered life wor­thy of Down­ton Abbey, with aides attend­ing to his every whim.  While he is enti­tled to all of this, giv­en the great weight of respon­si­bil­i­ty his office entails, it does make his want of gen­eros­i­ty all the more puzzling.

The Vice President’s com­pen­sa­tion is not mea­sured strict­ly in salary.  It involves a lifestyle that oth­ers earn­ing $385,000 could nev­er main­tain.  Let’s start with the house.  The Bidens live rent-free in a 9,150 square foot man­sion in North­west Wash­ing­ton, DC.

The house comes with all the resources it needs to keep it run­ning smooth­ly.  The Sen­ate ver­sion of the fis­cal year 2013 Finan­cial Ser­vices appro­pri­a­tions bill (S. 3301) makes $307,000 avail­able “for the care, oper­a­tion, refur­nish­ing, improve­ment, and to the extent not oth­er­wise pro­vid­ed for, heat­ing and light­ing, includ­ing elec­tric pow­er and fix­tures, of the offi­cial res­i­dence of the Vice Pres­i­dent; the hire of pas­sen­ger motor vehi­cles; and not to exceed $90,000 for offi­cial enter­tain­ment expens­es of the Vice Pres­i­dent, to be account­ed for sole­ly on his cer­tifi­cate.”   Giv­en the mud­dle into which annu­al fund­ing bills have fall­en, the Vice Pres­i­dent prob­a­bly gets a small­er hous­ing allowance than this.  Let’s just say that seques­tra­tion won’t like­ly cause him to miss pay­ing an elec­tric bill.

The Vice President’s com­pen­sa­tion pack­age extends far beyond salary, hous­ing and expens­es.  The mil­i­tary, for exam­ple, pro­vides his family’s meals.  Navy Enlist­ed Aides do every­thing from their gro­cery shop­ping to their laun­dry to cater­ing spe­cial events.

In addi­tion to food and hous­ing and oth­er every­day needs, the Vice Pres­i­dent also gets free trans­porta­tion.  He no longer lives his life in a train depot.  Instead he stretch­es out in the back of a bul­let-proof lim­ou­sine every morn­ing as his motor­cade speeds down Wis­con­sin Avenue, roil­ing Wash­ing­ton traf­fic on its way to his White House office.  For trav­el­ing far­ther afield, the Vice Pres­i­dent shares with the Pres­i­dent a fleet of 747s oper­at­ed and main­tained by the Air Force.  This moth­er of all cor­po­rate jet pools spares him the expense and indig­ni­ties of fly­ing com­mer­cial when he jour­neys some­where to speak of his deep and abid­ing compassion.

Gov­ern­ment-paid med­ical staff are avail­able to pro­vide him free care and main­tain his radi­ant smile.  And, of course, a Secret Ser­vice detach­ment man­ages to keep him safe, despite bear­ing that bane of pub­lic safe­ty, con­cealed weapons.

I could go on, but you get the pic­ture.  It’s not just that the Vice Pres­i­dent gets a big pay­check.  It’s that his tax-free perks relieve him of the need to spend his income on the sorts of things – rent or mort­gage, util­i­ties, meals, trans­porta­tion, med­ical bills and the like — that con­sume a big chunk of ordi­nary people’s earn­ings.  That leaves him with a whole lot of dis­pos­able income that he choos­es to pock­et, rather than give away.

How is it that some­one who iden­ti­fies with the less for­tu­nate, who cham­pi­ons the needy as part of his pro­fes­sion, so rarely cuts them a check?

Per­haps the Vice Pres­i­dent believes that espous­ing care for the poor relieves him of any per­son­al oblig­a­tion to care for the poor.  Or any­one else, for that mat­ter.  There’s no need to con­tribute to can­cer research if you advo­cate a big­ger bud­get for the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health.  No need to give to the local bat­tered women’s shel­ter if you sup­port the Vio­lence Against Women Act.  No need to con­tribute to minor­i­ty schol­ar­ships if you sup­port expand­ing Pell Grants.

And it may be that the Vice Pres­i­dent believes that oth­er wealthy peo­ple behave as he does, spend­ing their mon­ey on them­selves, rather than giv­ing back to their com­mu­ni­ties.  If so, the only real mea­sure of com­pas­sion is a will­ing­ness to spend oth­er people’s mon­ey on gov­ern­ment pro­grams.  If Repub­li­cans want to spend less than do Democ­rats, then they must be self­ish peo­ple who look out only for them­selves and their priv­i­leged friends.

Com­pas­sion is for him an ide­ol­o­gy, a pos­ture, some­thing to be pro­claimed, some­thing man­i­fest­ed in how much you pro­pose to spend on this or that gov­ern­ment pro­gram.  Com­pas­sion is cor­po­rate, not inter­per­son­al.  Sym­bol­ic, not tan­gi­ble.  It is some­thing that oth­er peo­ple pay for with their tax­es, not some­thing that comes out of your own wallet.

That doesn’t make the Vice Pres­i­dent a hyp­ocrite.  It just means that he and those he crit­i­cizes have very dif­fer­ent under­stand­ings of com­pas­sion.  That dif­fer­ence helps explain why Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans so often talk past each oth­er when they argue about gov­ern­ment spend­ing.  For Democ­rats, char­i­ty and gen­eros­i­ty are mea­sured in gov­ern­ment out­lays.  If Repub­li­cans want to cut spend­ing on a social pro­gram, or even slow the growth of such spend­ing, they must have hearts of flint and be indif­fer­ent to those in need.  For Repub­li­cans, char­i­ty and com­pas­sion are most pow­er­ful­ly man­i­fest­ed by pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions.   While they rec­og­nize a role for gov­ern­ment in pro­vid­ing a social safe­ty net, they are more like­ly than Democ­rats to wor­ry that exces­sive gov­ern­ment spend­ing sad­dles future gen­er­a­tions with bur­dens they will not eas­i­ly bear.  Com­pas­sion, for them, is not mere­ly help­ing peo­ple in the present, but also spar­ing peo­ple from a heavy load in the future.  In the eyes of the GOP, Democ­rats are indif­fer­ent to the hard­ships that they are inflict­ing on future generations.

Both par­ties have a point and it may not be pos­si­ble to arrive at a com­mon under­stand­ing of what it means to be compassionate.

For now, the dif­fer­ences in their points of view show up most clear­ly in the Vice President’s tax returns.