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… is from page 229 of Amity Shlaes’s 2007 book, The Forgotten Man [2]:
At tea at his house the year before, [FDR’s Secretary of Labor Frances] Perkins has sat beside Justice Harlan Stone, and he gave her a tip. She had confided her fears that any great social insurance system would be rejected by his court. Not so, he said, and whispered back the solution: “The taxing power of the federal government my dear; the taxing power is sufficient for everything you want and need.” If the Social Security Act was formulated as a tax, and not government insurance, it could get through.