Quote:
Originally Posted by regular.joe
So, the phrase "general welfare" has no meaning?
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The phrase "General Welfare" does have a meaning. It just doesn't grant any powers to the government outside of the enumerated powers they are explicitly given.
The exact words of the Constitution say that the federal government may have no powers other than those enumerated. Nowhere is the federal government given authority over immigration and the phrase "general welfare" doesn't grant such power to the fed.
Since you have no comprehension of what the phrase "general welfare" actually means, or what it meant at the time our founders created the Constitution, I'll borrow from a site that explains it very clearly and includes the legal definition of the phrase "general welfare" found in the 1828 version of Black's Law Dictionary
(The most widely used dictionary of legal terms and phrases)
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AN EXAMINATION OF THE 'GENERAL WELFARE' CLAUSE
by Alan Chapman (March 7, 2001)
The meaning of the phrase 'general welfare', with respect to its use in the Constitution, is the focus of much debate. The 'general welfare' clause is often cited as justification for government social services. This essay will attempt to discover the true meaning of the phrase 'general welfare' by examining various sources on the subject.
The phrase 'general welfare' appears twice in the Constitution. Once in the preamble and again in Article 1, Section 8.
The preamble to the Constitution states that:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The preamble is not a delegation of power to the federal government. It simply states a purpose.
Article 1, Section 8 states that:
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 meaning of words often change over time. To more accurately assess the meaning of the word 'welfare', with respect to its use in the Constitution, it is necessary to consult a source from the period during which the Constitution was written. According to the 1828 edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language the word "welfare" was defined as such:
A clear distinction is made with respect to welfare as applied to persons and states. In the Constitution the word 'welfare' is used in the context of states and not persons. The "welfare of the United States" is not congruous with the welfare of individuals, people, or citizens.
James Madison is considered by many to be the father of the Constitution. Madison wrote a letter in 1817 in which he discussed the proper role of the federal government and the limits placed on it by the Constitution.
Veto of federal public works bill
March 3, 1817
To the House of Representatives of the United States: 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.
"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce with a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
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." Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
James Madison,
President of the United States
Other quotes regarding this issue:
"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 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546
"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 (regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794)
"With respect to the 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."
- James Madison
Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
- Thomas Jefferson
It would seem that, contrary to the claims of those demanding government pursuits beyond the purview of the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution, the 'general welfare' clause does not give Congress broad and sweeping powers. Nor was it the intention of the founders to give Congress any.