Your Turn, Welfare Clause

These changing years
They add to your confusion
Oh and you need to hear
The time that told the truth
--Level 42

After yesterday's splash of enlightenment related to the Commerce clause, I experienced another a-ha moment last nite related to the General Welfare clause. Once again, the instigator was Judge Napolitano.

First, let's spell out the General Welfare clause. It appears as part of the first item spelled out under Article 1, Section 8:

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.

The judge pondered the relevance of the General Welfare clause w.r.t. the healthcare legislation and to the current tidal wave of pork making its way thru the legislative process.

Does the General Welfare clause grant power to the Federal government for creating the various 'welfare' programs we have today? No, he noted. In the Constitutional context of limited government and federalism, the central government collects taxes and other resources that promote general welfare among the states, not specific programs targeting particular interests.

A-haaa (told you).

In reviewing the language of the item (and of other items in Section 8), we can also observe that the framers viewed the collection and distribution of resources collected by the Federal government as being uniform among the states, with no preferential treatment (no SIGs). Once again, if this was not the general understanding during ratification, then it is hard to see how all states, each viewing themselves as sovereign entities in a federation, would have signed on board.

The judge observed that the general welfare concept applies toward pork barrel spending as well. Because resources collected via the tax process must be distributed generally with no preferential treatment, pork projects and earmarks are unconstitutional.

When viewed thru this lens, the scope of 'general welfare' programs that Congress can fund narrows considerably. Only those programs where all states benefit in kind would be valid. Beyond the 'common Defence' mentioned in the item, I have trouble coming up with programs that would qualify. Perhaps the interstate road system would be a valid one.

Like the Commerce clause, then, what appears at first glance to be a loophole for infinite government expansion is actually, upon further scrutiny, quite limiting--which makes the General Welfare clause wholly consistent with restraining nature of the Constitution.

It is not the clauses, but their perversion by people in our three branches of government, that is the enemy of liberty.