The General Welfare Clause

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I was recently discussing the usurpations of our Rights as it relates to the excesses of our government in the area of spending, and was confronted with the usual Liberal canard of the General Welfare clause as the justification for the government spending so much on so many patently un-constitutional programs. In response, I realized that there are entirely too many people who, while they do "support and defend the Constitution", are still ignorant of the true meaning of "the General Welfare" as mentioned in the Preamble as well as in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution, and rather than simply present my own "opinion" of it, to instead allow the FF's to speak to the subject in their own words.

"Our tenet ever was... that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1817.

"To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, "to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare." For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791.

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791.

"[If] it [were] assumed that the general government has a right to exercise all powers which may be for the 'general welfare,' that [would include] all the legitimate powers of government, since no government has a legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1792.

"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793

"The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to [the General Government's] power by the Constitution... Words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

RESOLVED: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers:
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.-- Thomas Jefferson, 1799

"Congress are authorized to defend the nation. Ships are necessary for defence; copper is necessary for ships; mines necessary for copper; a company necessary to work mines; and who can doubt this reasoning who has ever played at 'This is the House that Jack built?' Under such a process of filiation of necessities the sweeping clause makes clean work." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1800.

"I say... to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless: If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

"For authority to apply the surplus [of taxes] to objects of improvement, an amendment of the Constitution would have been necessary." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.

"I hope our courts will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words 'general defence and public welfare.' These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, 'all and some.' And should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government are done away." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1815.

"This phrase,... by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power. For in the phrase, 'to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' it is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first or are distinct and coordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1817

"Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," [the federal branch claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1825.

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As I am sure you have noticed, to this point I have presented only those opinions of President Thomas Jefferson. There are those among the obliviot class (Libtards) who will, rightfully, point out that Jefferson was not a part of the Constitutional Convention, completely disregarding the fact that he was in constant correspondence and council with James Madison while in France as our Ambassador, and therefore they erroneously assume that his 'opinion' on the meaning of the specific verbiage used by the FF's gathered in that hot room in Philadelphia is moot, to which I present the following by none other than the very father of our Constitution, James Madison;

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-- James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
-- James Madison, Federal No. 45, January 26, 1788

"We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government."-- James Jackson, First Congress, 1st Annals of Congress, 489

"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, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792,

"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, address before Congress, February 7, 1792

" The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."-- James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179, 1794 (regarding Congressional appropriation of $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia)

With respect to the two 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. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.--James Madison, letter to James Robertson

Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic ... That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
-- James Madison, 1799

And what of other American leaders, even after the time of the FF's?

"I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."
-- President Franklin Pierce's 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill.

"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit."
-- President Grover Cleveland vetoing a bill for charity relief, 18 Congressional Record 1875

And last, but far from least, and one that is too often forgotten;

"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights."
-- H.L. Mencken

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As you can clearly see, it was NEVER the intention of the FF's for "The General Welfare" to include any form of "charity" whatever, much less for our government to spend upward of 70% of our $4 TRILLION budget on programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, WIC, HUD, Section 8, AFDC, Head Start, or any of the plethora of "means tested entitlements" that they literally WASTE our hard earned tax dollars on EVERY YEAR. Lest we forget, the Founding Fathers went from being loyal British Subjects to picking up their .75 caliber Brown Bess Muskets, shoving them in the face of the worlds best military and telling them to "SOD OFF!!!" over taxes that amounted to less than $.03 a pound (about $.36 in 2007) on their BREAKFAST BEVERAGE, and it wasn't even COFFEE!!

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OOPS!! Seems that I forgot a few that further elucidate the clear meaning of the FF's as it relates to "the general welfare".

"For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity...."--James Madison, Federalist 41

"[S]ubjoined to this authority [is] an enumeration of the cases to which their [Congress’] powers shall extend. Money cannot be applied to the general welfare, otherwise than by an application of it to some particular measure, conducive to the general welfare. Whenever, therefore, money has been raised by the general authority, and is to be applied to a particular measure, a question arises whether the particular measure be within the enumerated authorities vested in Congress. If it be, the money requisite for it may be applied to it. If it be not, no such application can be made. This fair and obvious interpretation coincides with and is enforced by the clause in the Constitution which declares that ‘no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law."--James Madison, report on the Virginia Resolutions

"This clause specifies that they [Congress] shall make laws to carry into execution all the powers vested by this Constitution; consequently, they can make no laws to execute any other power. This clause gives no new power, but declares that those already given are to be executed by proper laws."--Archibald Maclaine, North Carolina debates on ratification

Actually there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual quotes from the FF's that can be used as exemplars of their clear meaning that Congress was to be limited in their power to tax and spend to only those things specifically enumerated in the text of Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution, just as it is abundantly clear that in the past 80 years, Congress has completely abandoned any pretext of maintaining any fealty to the very clear verbiage of the Constitution, the admonitions of the FF's to limit their activities to only those specifically enumerated things, or for that matter any restraint whatsoever in the exercise of their unconstitutional 'authority' to tax us and spend those dollars on any and everything that will maintain their 'power' over We The People, and have by these actions made themselves nothing more than despotic traitors to their oaths of office, and to We The People.