To Promote the General Welfare...

I once heard a preacher say, referencing the Bible, “When you can’t figure it out, read the directions.” This article won’t be about religion or the Bible, but it will be about reading the directions. We are very fortunate that our country came with an instruction book: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Both documents very clearly make the case for a limited government with very clearly defined roles.

Let’s say you buy something that requires some complicated assembly. If you don’t read the directions, you may very well put it together wrong, and it could potentially fall apart and hurt someone. The same is true for our country. When we try to build our government without deference to our Constitution, some quirky things happen that can become very dangerous.

We can begin to misinterpret or deliberatly reinterpret clauses and words in the Constitution. For instance, we can interpret the term “public use” as meaning “public purpose.” Or we can use the term “promote the General Welfare” as a “loophole” to accomplish pretty much whatever we want.

There is obviously much to be written about the Constitution, and I’m sure I will write more as time goes by, but this article will confine itself to the General Welfare clause.

The term “general welfare” appears twice in the Constitution, once in the preamble and again in Article I Section VIII. Thankfully, James Madison and others recognized that this could be a dangerous term and thus went well out of their way to explain exactly what they meant by this term.

The General Welfare clause was very clearly not meant as carte blanche for the government to do whatever it saw fit to accomplish the nebulous goal of promoting the general welfare. The Founders recognized that if they were to use such a broad term, they must qualify it and specifically enumerate what they meant by it.

In The Federalist Papers #41 Madison explains,

“It has been urged and echoed that the power to ‘lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.

“Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases…

“But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?”

What Madison is saying here is that to use the term “general welfare” as an open ended authority for government to accomplish anything it sees fit is to undermine the entire premise of the Constitution. He says that for one to “[stoop] to such a misconstruction” immediately exposes one as having an ulterior motive other than that of limited government.

To use the term “general welfare” to accomplish a goal in which the Constitution provides no other means, is to blatantly disregard the specific enumerations that immediately follow it. Indeed it would be ironic if one tried to resort to “general welfare” because he couldn’t find justification for his desired action anywhere else in the Constitution, because the term “general welfare” is just a summation of the limited power specifically enumerated in the other areas of the Constitution.

It’s like a dog trying to find a bone by chasing its tail. It will never work.

Here is Article I, Section VIII so you can see for yourself.

“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;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

As you can see, there is a list of enumerated powers that immediately follows the term “General Welfare”. It is these enumerated powers – and no others – that the government may use to “promote the general welfare”.