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House Majority Leader Hoyer announced today that the "Welfare Clause" of the Constitution gives the Fed Govt broad powers to do virtually anything it wants to promote the welfare of the U.S. It was another misinterpretation of that part of the Constitution, common among big-government advocates.
Actually that part of the Const says that Congress can collect taxes for certain purposes, and no others. One of the purposes is "to provide for the General Welfare of the U.S.". But that means, Congress can spend tax money on things that benefit all American equally... and NOT on things that benefit some but not others.
When the Constitution was written, there were two kinds of "Welfare": "General" welfare, and "Particular" welfare. "General" welfare meant things that benefit everyone equally, while "Particular" welfare meant things that benefit only certain persons or groups but not everyone.
So the "Welfare clause" is actually a restriction. Congress can spend tax money on things that benefit all Americans equally, but not on things that only benefit some (what we would call Special Interests today).
If it were to give the Fed govt the broad powers Hoyer claims it does, 3/4 of the Constitution would become irrelevant. There would be no need for it to spell out the actual powers it does (Running the armed forces, setting up courts, coining money etc. - all of which benefit people).
The Welfare Clause meant nothing of the kind, of course. The entire Constitution was written to create the Fed govt, take some powers from the states and give them to the Fed... and to forbid the Fed from any others, which the states still hold.
This purpose is violated by Big-Govt advocates (in both parties) all the time, of course. Hoyer's bizarre announcement is merely more of the same... and is just as wrong today as it has been for centuries, no matter how often the Constitution is violated.
CNSNews.com - Hoyer Says Constitution’s ‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/55851 - broken link)
Hoyer Says Constitution’s ‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
By Matt Cover
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the individual health insurance mandates included in every health reform bill, which require Americans to have insurance, were “like paying taxes.” He added that Congress has “broad authority” to force Americans to purchase other things as well, so long as it was trying to promote “the general welfare.”
The Congressional Budget Office, however, has stated in the past that a mandate forcing Americans to buy health insurance would be an “unprecedented form of federal action,” and that the “government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
(Full text of the article can be read at the above URL)
I just heard a discussion on Fox about this very thing, the requiring of buying health insurance as compared to buying auto insurance. 49 states require some kind of auto insurance and as an example of how well that works without some kind of enforcement, California has 18% of its people without auto insurance. I guess you have to jail those who break laws and some still won't buy, hoping for the best.
Steny Hoyer reads the Constitution exactly like Nasty Nancy Pelosi and they are very liberal in their interpretations. Using the general welfare words as the reason to require everybody to have health insurance is a real stretch of the clause but liberals have been stretching that one for so long now.
I just heard a discussion on Fox about this very thing, the requiring of buying health insurance as compared to buying auto insurance. 49 states require some kind of auto insurance
A completely misplaced argument. No state requires auto insurance. And the Fed govt certainly doesn't.
Most states require that you show financial responsibility before you drive a car, so you can pay for whatever you may crash into. In many states, if you have a big pile in the bank, you don't need insurance.
And if you don't drive a car, you don't even need that.
Finally, states have many powers the Fed doesn't. The Constitution says so (see 10th amendment). One of them is the power to force people to buy things... IF the state wants to exercise that power. But they don't have to.
When the Constitution was written, there were two kinds of "Welfare": "General" welfare, and "Particular" welfare. "General" welfare meant things that benefit everyone equally, while "Particular" welfare meant things that benefit only certain persons or groups but not everyone.
There was no such discuss during the Constitutional convention which drew a distinction between general welfare and particular welfare. As for the breath or limits of the general welfare clause, due to the fact that there wasn't any debate on the inclusion of the clause, it's meaning and implications was and has been a matter of debate, beginning with the Washington administration.
Subsequently, the issue of the general welfare has been reviewed on a number of occasions by the Supreme Court which in United States v Butler found the that the general welfare clause indeed granted greater and additional powers to the Federal government.
That being said, it will be interesting to see how national health care will be viewed by the Court as it will surely be challenged.
In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office reported the following about health insurance mandates: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.
Quote:
“Congressman Hoyer is wrong,” Rivkin said. “The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly because if that’s true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything.
“The arguments are, I believe, feeble,” he said.
I'm 100% certain, we will find out.
The minute this passes and obama signs it, the lawsuits will flood in.
Mr. Majority Leader,
I just wanted to send you an email quickly regarding your most recent "interpretation" of the Constitution. I figure I will be wasting my time arguing the fundamental problems with your interpretations, which I will remind you is up to the judical system, not you. Thus, rather than argue the points that seem to have escaped you and are subject to the oath you took when you accepted office, please find attached quotes from our founding fathers. These are the gentleman that wrote the constitution, thus their own interpretation of the meaning of the various clauses and bills seem to warrant a value higher than your own.
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare,
and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare,
they may take the care of religion into their own hands;
they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish
and pay them out of their public treasury;
they may take into their own hands the education of children,
establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union;
they may assume the provision of the poor;
they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads;
in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation
down to the most minute object of police,
would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power
of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for,
it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature
of the limited Government established by the people of America" -James Madison
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." - James Madison
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." - James Madison
“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” - James Madison
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” - Thomas Jefferson
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” - Benjamin Franklin
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” - Benjamin Franklin
“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” - Benjamin Franklin
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” - John Adams
Please do attempt to understand the Constitution as it was written and base your duties as a representative and majority leader around the oath that you took to preserve and protect a document that us citizens hold dear. Please stop trying to interpret the Constitution as you see fit to work into the confines of your motivations.
Last edited by jcarlilesiu; 10-21-2009 at 03:24 PM..
The minute this passes and obama signs it, the lawsuits will flood in.
Obama pushing national healthcare might be the best thing to ever happen to the country. Let the courts rule this illegal, and the dominos will begin on other expenses..
A completely misplaced argument. No state requires auto insurance. And the Fed govt certainly doesn't.
Most states require that you show financial responsibility before you drive a car, so you can pay for whatever you may crash into. In many states, if you have a big pile in the bank, you don't need insurance.
And if you don't drive a car, you don't even need that.
Finally, states have many powers the Fed doesn't. The Constitution says so (see 10th amendment). One of them is the power to force people to buy things... IF the state wants to exercise that power. But they don't have to.
The Fed does not have that power.
A completely apples-and-oranges comparison.
If you operate a motor vehicle in the state of MI, you must have no-fault insurance.
There was no such discuss during the Constitutional convention which drew a distinction between general welfare and particular welfare.
Sorry, I made a mistake. The terms were "General Welfare" and "LOCAL Welfare", not "Particular Welfare". My bad. There was considerable discussion of them, during and after the Constitutional Convention.
Quote:
Subsequently, the issue of the general welfare has been reviewed on a number of occasions by the Supreme Court which in United States v Butler found the that the general welfare clause indeed granted greater and additional powers to the Federal government.
It did. In that case, it found that between the two historic views (James Madison's view and Alexander Hamilton's view), the Justices preferred Hamilton's. Bully for them, they agreed with me, too.
Madison's view was that the Welfare Clause didn't add ANY powers to the Fed govt, beyond what was explicitly spelled out in the rest of the Constitution. Hamilton's view was that it added certain limited powers: to wit, power to spend tax money on things that helped all American equally. But Hamilton was careful to point out that things that helped restricted groups ("Local Welfare") were still prohibited to the Fed. On that last point, Madison and Hamilton agreed.
Today's leftists have already exploded government's authority and intrusiveness far beyond anything imagined by Madison, Hamilton, or any of the other Framers. The Framers complained about total tax burdens reaching 10% of income, and launched the bloody and destructive American Revolution in part because of them. Today our tax burdens regularly exceed 40% of income... and that doesn't begin to cover the other ways today's govt intrudes on our formerly-private lives.
And now we have people like Steny Hoyer who would expand the powers supposedly granted by the Welfare Clause hugely beyond anything Alexander Hamilton ever dreamed... and similarly beyond what the 1936 Supreme Court decided in US v. Butler. The expansions of government pushed by our modern "liberals" would astound virtually every person in the United States in 1789, and most of the 1936 residents. Most of the 1789 residents fled their native countries precisely to get away from the kind of govt advocated by today's "liberals".
Probably the biggest difference between today's Americans and those of 1789, is that today there is no New World to flee to, to get away from the enroaching, oppressive government the big-govt fanatics keep trying to force upon us.
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