Do you think this is an accident ?

Do you not think that the Constitution describes what the federal government CAN concern itself with and leave the rest outside it's pervue ?

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Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

Jesus loves you, allah wants you dead

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

Promoting and providing for the general welfare are both specifically enumerated in our Constitution.

I think that charity is so much a normal function of government dating back to ancient times that the framers saw no need to spell it out in detail. The authorization to tax and spend for the general welfare is sufficient to encompass government charity.

Again, Daniel, I'm going to have to call you on this.

The preamble, to begin with, has no legal force. It's only a statement of the purpose of the Constitution overall.

The first power enumerated in Article I, Section 8 is the power to lay and collect taxes, and by logical extension to spend money. The phrase "provide for the general welfare of the United States" applies to that power, and ONLY to that power. It isn't a general authorization for the government to do whatever it wants provided it can justify it by one of those two phrases. The power to spend money is very broad, but there are many powers of government that it doesn't encompass. Congress can't make the wearing of polyester a federal crime on the grounds that it serves the general welfare to do so, however true that may be.

I ANSWERED NO. As you would already know if you had read enough of my posts at this forum.

Really. So, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the father of the constitution have no idea what the constitution means?

If this were true, then why did Congress reject the bill to help the NAVY WIDOW AFTER CROCKETT'S SPEECH?

Davey Crockett learned about charity from a man named Horatio Bunce..............

"It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the Government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the Government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right: to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive, what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose."

Some people believe the government can do whatever it wants, no matter how small the group is that is being helped. Even if it is studying goth culture in Blue Springs, Missouri.

No one disagrees with that. What we disagree with is what it empowers the govt to do. Weve already posted numerous times the words of the people who wrote it which explain that it wasnt a blank check.

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

Why do you keep rewriting what I say to mean something different than what I said?

The Constitution was a joint effort and a compromise. There were conflicting political interests and positions in the early republic just as there are today. Thomas Jefferson represented one side of the debate. Madison was more moderate than Jefferson, but basically on the same side. Hamilton, Adams, and Washington were on the other side.

Taking Jefferson's or Madison's interpretation of the Constitution as authoritative would be akin to someone a couple of hundred years from now interpreting all early 21st-century American politics by the words of Dennis Kucinich.

They took some pains to describe what was acceptable actions for which to lay taxes etc. and as with the rest of the document, if its not enumerated, its not OK. Yes, it was a compormise but it was what won out is it wound up in the document.

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Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

Jesus loves you, allah wants you dead

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

The remaining enumerated powers are separate powers, not modifications of the power to lay and collect taxes.

they are what Congress may lay and collect taxes to do.

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Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

Jesus loves you, allah wants you dead

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

That's a twisting of the plain language of the Constitution, which would normally be read as saying that Congress may collect taxes "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" -- which is exactly what it says. The remaining powers are IN ADDITION to the power to tax.

I'm familiar with Madison's argument before Congress along the lines you're saying, but that was just as much a twisting of Constitutional language when he said it. He was, after all, a politician. As I've said repeatedly, there is no reason to regard one side of the Constitution compromise -- the Democratic-Republican side -- as determinative and binding. Madison's interpretation was his own opinion, not binding on anyone else. (Except insofar as, being president at the time, he had the authority. He is no longer president.)

What's more, nobody ever seems to argue that any powers except this one are subordinate to some other power. Nobody ever argues, for example, that the power to coin money may only be used to build an army, or that Congress may only build post offices and post roads to serve in regulating interstate commerce. There is no logical reason to treat the power to tax as a subordinate power while regarding all of the other enumerated powers as separate and distinct. The clear meaning of Article I Section 8 is that they are ALL separate and distinct powers -- including the first one.

It may not have legal force, but it should have moral force; as the "mission statement" for our form of statism. And, it is enumerated in our social contract.

How exactly do you propose to protect the poor from the rich?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson