The Most Abused Clause in the Constitution

by Chad Kent

It’s time in our journey through the Constitution to look at one of the most abused and distorted clauses in the entire document: the General Welfare Clause. Over the years, we’ve managed to get to the point where our courts now read this clause to mean the complete opposite of what was intended.

That re-invention of the General Welfare Clause has been pivotal in allowing the federal government to grow to the enormous size it’s at today. So pivotal in fact, that if we could just convince the courts to apply this one clause as intended, that alone might be enough to get our system to work properly again.

To see why, let’s start by taking a look at the text of the clause itself in 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.”

Today, the conventional wisdom is that this clause means that Congress can spend money for any public purpose it wants—and that this spending power is not limited by the enumeration of powers that comes later in Article 1, Section 8. The Supreme Court made that exact claim in its majority decision in U.S. v Butler (1936).

As I’ve explained earlier, the General Welfare Clause has also been improperly used to claim that Congress has a virtually unlimited power to tax.

But that interpretation is complete nonsense. To see that, let’s go back and take a look at what the size and scope of our federal government was intended to be.
During the Philadephia Convention, influential Founder Roger Sherman characterized the purpose of the federal government this way:

“The objects of the Union… were few – first, defence against foreign danger; second, against internal disputes and a resort to force; thirdly, treaties with foreign nations; fourthly, regulating foreign commerce, and drawing revenue from it… All other matters, civil and criminal, would be much better in the hands of the states.”

Another leading founder, James Iredell, expressed a similar point of view in North Carolina’s ratifying convention:

“The general government will have the protection and management of the general interests of the United States. The local and particular interests of the different states are left to their respective legislatures. All affairs which concern this state only are to be determined by our representatives coming from all parts of the state; all affairs which concern the Union at large are to be determined by representatives coming from all parts of the Union.”

These two statements are a pretty good representation of the beliefs of a lot of the people who wrote and ratified our Constitution.

Read the rest:
Constitution Revolution: The Most Abused Clause in the Constitution | TheBlaze.com