If this is hypocritical, so is paying the lower tax rate than his secretary, even thought he complains about it. Anyone thinking its hypocritical is missing the point. He does it to show it exists. Sure, you can not do it, and donate to the government on your own, but that's not fixing the problem. The small number of donators can't fix the deficit on their own. It takes a law that required everyone to play ball in order to fix the problem.