Giving charity

John Smith, a make believe mayor, is running for re-election and he proudly boast that during his first term he built a new police station, a new fire house and a new school. He says vote for me and I will build a new convention hall. Rewording this, we hear, during my first term I spent a million dollars of your money on a new police station, and another million on a new fire house and another million on a new school. Re-elect me and I will spend two million dollars of your money on a new convention hall and I may even name it after me. I bring this up as a lead in to the recent controversy of Trump’s donation of 6 million dollars to the vets. In his speech he mentioned that Hilary never gave this kind of money to the vets and she responded that because of her leadership the government has increased money for vets. This points to a fundamental difference where in Trump is talking about private citizens giving willingly to charity and Hilary is talking about by force of law transferring money from those who earn it to those who deserve it. We often hear people ask, what would Jesus do? As far as I can tell, Jesus often suggested that people take care of the poor but I have not seen any evidence that Jesus wanted this to be done under law by the government.