How Liberals can pay More Taxes Voluntarily

With Joe Biden in the news talking about taxes and patriotism.Reason reports:

The federal government has been accepting gifts since 1843—they even set up a special account for gifts "such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States." Surprisingly, the U.S. Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt picked up $2.6 million last year from individual donations. In 2006, a 98-year-old Ohio woman even donated her entire $1.1 million estate.

Biden's Senate colleagues have taken advantage of this provision. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) handed over a $600 tax rebate check in a fit of pique over tax cuts in 2001. "They were very generous in handing this money out to me, and I'm going to be very generous in sending it back,'' said the then-83-year-old chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes showed manifestations of Biden's pocketbook patriotism as well. In Felix Frankfurter's book on Holmes we learn that "he did not have a curmudgeon's feelings about his own taxes." A secretary who exclaimed: "Don't you hate to pay taxes!" was rebuked with the hot response, "No, young feller. I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." Holmes repeated this sentiment, minus the jazzy slang, in an opinion in 1927, the same year as Buck v. Bell, the case that permitted the sterilization of a disabled woman on the ground that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." In his opinion, Holmes justified the decision on the grounds of a kind of patriotism: "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices."

You'll want to read the whole article.