Quote:
Originally Posted by chad3
Our constitution says for government "to insure domestic tranquility" and "promote the general welfare"
It is also our governments job to help those people.
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Not even close. I see that publik eddicayshun is shining through again.
The "Welfare Clause"
There's a section of the Constitution, that mentions providing for the general welfare. It's popularly called (surprise!) the "Welfare Clause". And it's been used more than almost any other part of the Constitution, to try to justify unlimited expansion of the Federal government.
In full, that part of the Constitution says:
Article 1, Section 8:
"The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts, and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
"To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; [/SIZE]
"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
"To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization...."
It's difficult, and sometimes unwise, to take pieces out of context. And that's been done wrong, more times than can be counted, for this particular Clause. Here's an attempt to do it right:
"Congress shall have the Power To collect Taxes to provide for the general Welfare of the United States [and for other listed purposes]...."
People often leave out the collect-taxes part, and claim simply that "Congress can provide for the general Welfare". They then decide that "general Welfare" means anything that helps people, in any way. This is very convenient for those who want to expand government control, since the number of things that can help people, is almost unlimited.
They couldn't be more wrong, though.
It wouldn't have made much sense, for the original writers of the Constitution to take all the trouble of writing out certain powers of the government such as coining money, setting up Post Offices, punishing counterfeiters, offering patents for inventions, etc. Those things all help people, certainly.
If they were going to just make a general clause saying Government could do anything it wants, that helps people, those other powers are pretty redundant, aren't they? Why bother naming those particular powers, when you've already put a blanket permission for them plus lots of others, in place?
If the Welfare clause were a blanket permission, then 3/4 of the Constitution could be tossed out, because it would already be covered.
But, remember the collect-taxes part.
"Congress shall have the Power to collect Taxes to provide for the general Welfare of the United States [and for other listed purposes]...."
In fact, the Clause is a statement of what government can spend tax money on. Not a permission to do whatever they wanted under the vague guise of "helping people". And "general Welfare" had a specific definition in 1787-- it was written that way, to distinguish it from "Welfare of particular groups". So, "to provide for the general Welfare" is actually a restriction on government, not a broad permission. The complete clause really means, that the government can collect and spend tax money, but that anything spent to help people, must be applied
evenly to the entire population, and cannot be "targeted" at certain groups. Further, it implies but does not explicitly say, that if a spending program does not boost the welfare
of the entire population, then it is forbidden. Unless, of course, the spending program comes under other permissions listed in the Constitution, such as National Defense, the Courts, Patent office, etc.
History of the Welfare Clause
Laws and court cases challenging the meaning of the Welfare Clause, began as soon as the Constitution was written. And in every case for a century and a half, the Supreme Court firmly reminded us that the Clause was not a broad permission to do anything. This trend continued day after day, year after year, with remarkably little deviation from the idea that the government had only limited powers-- those listed explicitly in the Constitution. Financial panics, natural and man-made disasters, crop failures, and wars did not change the view of the courts.
And that view was simply that the Welfare Clause was never intended to change the limited nature of the Federal government... and that "events do not change Constitutions". Only the amendment process could alter this basic idea. And the people advocating change, avoided such a public referendum like the plague.
Upsetting the Applecart
The idea of limited government, and the restrictive nature of the Welfare Clause, lasted until two events occurred together: one old and one new. The "old" event was the Great Depression, which started elsewhere and spread to this country in the late 1920s. Depressions and financial panics were nothing new to the United States, having happened regularly throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. Examples are the Panic of 1837, the recession of 1857, the Panic of 1873, the Panic of 1893, and the recession of 1921. All were preceded by extensive government dabbling in formerly-private projects and financial markets. And all were characterized by steeply rising unemployment, falling prices and wages, decreasing production, and loss of confidence in the nation's financial health. When the government projects collapsed and people realized they had to fend for themselves, they absorbed the painful losses, and recovery then took place. Things were more or less back to normal within a few years.
But, by the 1930s, a second element had joined the Depression that showed up in 1929: instantaneous, one-way mass communication, usually via radio. The advocates of government expansion used it effectively, to persuade people desperate for solutions, that Government could fix the problems they faced, without having to go into detail of how fixes would be done or what other things might also be affected. No mention was made of the ideals of personal independence and liberty; and no mention of Constitutional bans on such government "help". People heard what they wanted to hear, that the problems would finally be taken care of, and they ate it up.
Since the founding of the country, people had relied on their own experiences and those of their friends and neighbors, to decide how to solve their problems. There was literally no other source of information, save an occasional telephone contact with a person outside their community, or a newspaper or speech from a traveler-- usually taken with a healthy grain of salt.
But in 1921, the first commercial radio broadcast station received its license, and by the 1932 elections, nearly 2/3 of all American households had radios, listening to more than 600 stations nationwide. Now they were treated to a deluge of rhetoric delivered nationwide, in ringing tones, stating the "everyone knew" that the solution lay in Government. People had little opportunity to ask for details of how government intended to make such sweeping changes-- talking back to the radio, merely made them look silly. Millions of people desperate for solutions, watching their businesses wither away and their families go hungry, grasped avidly at these straws. They elected a new President in 1932, who had promised to the avid listeners to make government fix things; and who brought with him thousands "whiz kids" to set up new government departments and exert new controls on the nation's economy. The population of bureaucrats in Washington, DC nearly doubled, in the two years after the election-- most going into the new government agencies designed to help people and solve their everyday problems.
Wishful Thinking Butts Heads with Reality
The Supreme Court was not among those avid millions. Apparently unimpressed by the new admninistration's rhetoric, they stuck to their job of evaluating Federal laws for adherence to the Constitution, including the restrictive Welfare Clause. And they began striking down the new programs as fast as cases were brought to them, pointing out that the programs exceeded the powers given to the government by the Constitution. Repeated appeals to the stretched definition of the Welfare Clause and others, were rejected as they had always been.
The Court even pointed out that, while they wished they could help with the severe problems afflicting the country in the throes of the Depression, they could no more do it with forbidden government largesse, than they could by robbing banks an distributing the proceeds. "Events do not change Constitutions", and their job was to enforce the Constitution, for very good reason. Only amendments changed Constitutions, and the administration was studiously avoiding the amendment procedure, admitting frankly that the people would not approve such amendment.
Frustrated by the Court's insistence upon Constitutional adherence, and unconcerned with the damage to the principles they were charged with upholding, the President embarked on an amazing course of demonizing and harassing the Supreme Court itself. Using again the new medium or radio, along with newspaper and newsreels, he announced that the Constitution should be regarded as a changeable document whose provisions should be altered to fit conditions, rather than a framework that described, and limited, the government according to a philosophy of freedom and personal responsibility. He then attacked the Court justices personally, publicly accusing them of being the sole obstacle preventing national recovery. Again the Constitution's mandates were brushed aside, and people were unable to explore the issues by asking questions to their radios and newspapers.
Finally, in a national radio address, where the President did not have to explain or answer questions, he announced a plan to put six additional justices on the Supreme Court, who would be sympathetic to his own flexible views of the importance of the Constitution. Three weeks later, the Court started reversing its own decisions and agreeing with the President's desires. (Ironically, this "Court-packing" plan never made it through Congress, but by then the damage was done).
An Abrupt Change of Course
Since the Supreme Court abruptly reversed its adherence to the Constitution in the 1930s, and begun interpreting the Welfare Clause to mean that the government can in fact do anything that helps anyone, programs to do that have multiplied enormously. Examples are Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, plus an incredible number of new governmental departments The one thing they have in common, of course, is that they help only specific segments of the population: retirees, poor people, the infirm, etc. Presently, three-quarters of the Federal budget (in other words, three-quarters of the taxes you pay) is devoted to these programs, and service of the debts they have created.
At the same time, huge volumes of laws, unthinkable before 1930, have been imposed on the country, restricting everything from doctor-patient relationships to the operation of your toilets. All, naturally, in the name of "helping people".
A Return to Sanity?
Now, in the 1990s, some glimmerings of hope have begun to appear. In several recent Supreme Court decisions, the stretching of the Welfare Clause, Commerce Clause, and other phrases away from what they were intended, has come under scrutiny once again. And interpretations like those which permitted the expansion of government for the last 60 years, have now been rejected in recent cases. Furthermore, several Justices have expressed the need to re-evaluate past decisions based on such stretching of the Clauses. We have departed a long way, from the inten of the Constitution. And we face a long road back, with no assurance that we will have the fortitude to stay the course. But we have started to make the first small steps, for what they are worth.
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