General Welfare Queens

By Adam at August 19th, 2009.

When challenged to explain what part of the Constitution gives them the power to even pass health care reform, I’ve heard at least a couple liberal talk radio callers rest their defense in the Preamble to the Constitution’s use of the term “General Welfare.”

But does General Welfare really mean that health care reform is constitutionally permitted? Well, as it happens the Father of the Constitution, James Madision, became President and was presented with a public works bill which he vetoed and in that veto message he addressed the meaning of the General Welfare clause…

Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled “An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements,” and which sets apart and pledges funds “for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense,” I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.

The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States…

To refer the power in question to the clause “to provide for common defense and general welfare” would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms “common defense and general welfare” embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared “that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Given that Madison took such a dim view of roads and canals, anyone to bet that Madison would view universal health care as an appropriate use of government power under the Constituton?  Madison writing in Federalist #45 is even more explicit:

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. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Of course, it’s true that most federal programs from Abstinence Education to Zoos and including such third rail budget busters like Social Security and Medicare are patently in violation of the spirit of the Constitution. However, I’m not of the mind that we can change the Constitution by simply ignoring it. If liberals succeed in passing health care reform, no judge will stop them. Courts have tolerated far too many violations of the plain text of the Constitution to change their ways now. I only ask that our friends on the left spare us ignorant pseudo-constitutional justifications for this monstrosity.

Tags: constitution, Health Care, ObamaCare

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