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People that don't understand how government works, or the Constitution, mix State laws with Federal laws, all the time. They think they are one and the same. It is just ignorance and not their fault...
Where, in the full text of the constitution and not amendments, does it allow anyone but white male landowners to vote? Where does it say in there you can be 18 and vote? Where does it allow taxation? Where does it make slavery illegal?
It's a document that changes over time, that's the point of the amendments.
It is a document that can only be changed by amendment, not just cuz the new prez thinks it's a good idea. Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution is NOT a "living document" as some would have you believe. That's why I have so much trouble watching the "Supremes" make decisions that are far more than interpretations of this magificent document.
So as for the health care situation, there is nothing "constitutional" about the government imposing their will on what should remain a personal decision.
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 1
"The Congress shall have 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;"
There is no doubt that national(universal) healthcare is entirely constitutional.
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 1
"The Congress shall have 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;"
There is no doubt that national(universal) healthcare is entirely constitutional.
There you have it,the first {D} that goes straight to the general welfare clause to prove that it is the federal gvts role for health care.
I wonder if he can name a socialist program or any program that the forefathers started and saying it is under the general welfare clause?
Lets say that people became so lazy they would'nt wipe their own ass,under your thinking should the federal gvt hire people to do it under the general welfare clause? I mean these people would smell and could spread diseases.Does the general welfare clause cover that?
We haven't had a real president since Kennedy, and look what happened to him. The entire system is corrupt. Obama's a puppet. All of the industries are sleeping together. Congress is in bed with the orgy. Money power greed.. the fall of Rome!
The Court recognized that the United States utilized the clause only as a source of authority for federal taxation and spending, not for general legislation.
Step one is to go after the violation of the rule that ALL appropriations must be GENERAL. Since the Supreme Court adopted Hamilton's version, as supported by Justice Story, use their words and the Court's ruling against Congress for violating the rule.
Hamilton wrote:
“That the object to which an appropriation of money is to be made be General and not local; its operation extending in fact, or by possibility, throughout the Union, and not being confined to a particular spot.”
Story wrote:
“A power to lay taxes for any purposes whatsoever is a general power; a power to lay taxes for certain specified purposes is a limited power. A power to lay taxes for the common defence and general welfare of the United States is not in common sense a general power. It is limited to those objects. It cannot constitutionally transcend them. If the defence proposed by a tax be not the common defence of the United States, if the welfare be not general, but special, or local, as contradistinguished from national, it is not within the scope of the constitution.”
Pork and earmarks violate the rule and would disappear because they are not general. Bribing members of Congress with money for projects their State or district in exchange for an important vote would disappear because it is not general.
The scope of the national spending power was brought before
the Supreme Court at least five times prior to 1936, but the Court
disposed of four of the suits without construing the ‘‘general welfare’’
clause. In the Pacific Railway Cases 588 and Smith v. Kansas
City Title Co., 589 it affirmed the power of Congress to construct internal
improvements, and to charter and purchase the capital stock
of federal land banks, by reference to its powers over commerce,
post roads, and fiscal operations, and to its war powers. Decisions
on the merits were withheld in two other cases, Massachusetts v.
Mellon and Frothingham v. Mellon, 590 on the ground that neither
a State nor an individual citizen is entitled to a remedy in the
courts against an alleged unconstitutional appropriation of national
funds.
Quote:
Social Security Act Cases.—Although holding that the
spending power is not limited by the specific grants of power contained
in Article I, § 8, the Court found, nevertheless, that it was
qualified by the Tenth Amendment, and on this ground ruled in
the Butler case that Congress could not use moneys raised by taxation
to ‘‘purchase compliance’’ with regulations ‘‘of matters of
State concern with respect to which Congress has no authority to
interfere.’’ 597 Within little more than a year this decision was reduced
to narrow proportions by Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 598
which sustained the tax imposed on employers to provide unemployment
benefits, and the credit allowed for similar taxes paid to
a State. To the argument that the tax and credit in combination
were ‘‘weapons of coercion, destroying or impairing the autonomy
of the States,’’ the Court replied that relief of unemployment was
a legitimate object of federal expenditure under the ‘‘general welfare’’
clause, that the Social Security Act represented a legitimate
attempt to solve the problem by the cooperation of State and Federal
Governments, that the credit allowed for state taxes bore a
reasonable relation ‘‘to the fiscal need subserved by the tax in its
normal operation,’’ 599 since state unemployment compensation payments
would relieve the burden for direct relief borne by the national
treasury. The Court reserved judgment as to the validity of
a tax ‘‘if it is laid upon the condition that a State may escape its
operation through the adoption of a statute unrelated in subject
matter to activities fairly within the scope of national policy and
power.’’ 600
So is it a right to have insurance or not. I am willing to bet the people who say it is would argue the point of the social programs we have becoming insolvent. However they would need to justify how adding tens of millions of more people to a similar program is going to slow or reverse that insolvency.
The short answer is it will not. If anything it will speed up the process. The real debate should be how to make health care more affordable not how to bankrupt the nation faster.
They regulate all kinds of stuff, you would prefer they didn't?
Casper
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