That’s contrary to what the authors of the constitution have meant when they wrote it. See my other comment. Roughly speaking, if the “general welfare” was supposed to mean “anything the congress wants to do to provide for general welfare”, there would be absolutely no point in enumerating the powers it does have. Madison was extremely clear about that, and this is how this article was universally understood (otherwise, the constitution would have had no snowball chance in hell of passing) up until Helvering v. Davis, when it was promptly thrown away and replaced with the opposite of original intention.
The US Constitution grants states the right to enact laws that protect the general welfare
The writers of the constitution have explicitly said in the Federalist papers that the "general welfare" phrase is not meant to imply anything beyond the enumerated powers listed afterwards. That the courts interpret it the way you say they do is just an example how the Constitution became just a parchment which is taken to mean whatever is convenient at any particular moment.
Authoritarians for decades have attempting to expand "general welfare" far beyond its original remit
In Federalist 41,Madison clearly states that the general welfare clause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grant of power. It is a mere “synonym” for the enumeration of particular powers, which are limited and wholly define its content. From this answer, it follows that the primary meaning of the national dimension of the federal Constitution is limited government, understood as a government with a limited number of powers or means.
In short it is about the General Welfare *of the United States* on the whole, to provide means for Congress to have revenue to enforce and discharge the powers granted therein.
It is NOT.. I repeat NOT a general statement of power to provide all individuals all people "general welfare" like people attempt to conflate it to mean in modern day and as your comment asserts.
Taking from the populace and giving to specific individuals is not what was meant by that phrase. General welfare in the Constitution has never meant singling out individuals or groups and providing for them with public funds.
Alas, this argument is as old as the Constitution itself. "Madison asserted it amounted to no more than a reference to the other powers enumerated in the subsequent clauses of the same section; that, as the United States is a government of limited and enumerated powers, the grant of power to tax and spend for the general national welfare must be confined to the enumerated legislative fields committed to the Congress. In this view the phrase is mere tautology, for taxation and appropriation are or may be necessary incidents of the exercise of any of the enumerated legislative powers. Hamilton, on the other hand, maintained the clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States."[1]
Congress has the power to spend federal revenue. The responsibilities of Congress are explicitly defined in Section 8 of the Constitution. The first clause of Section 8 does include "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". That is for the welfare of the Union, not the individual residents of states. None of the powers of Congress are to distribute funds to individuals with charity programs. In fact, for much of the nations history using public funds for charity was an abhorrent idea.
I already address the wrong interpretation of General Welfare here [1] it is a common tactic by Authoritarians to expand the scope of the federal government to be unlimited, when clearly the purpose of the constitution was to limit the government, If your understanding of that clause is correct then there is no reason to go on and list other powers as literally everything is included in "General Welfare" and the US Federal Governments power is unlimited. That is not the case
>>"General welfare" is a much wider term, that can encompass more and more, as minimum humanity standards increase.
Ahh your a living document believer, that we should reinterpret the constitution under the lens of how words are used in common usage today, not the original intent of the provisions. I am an orginalist so no I do not agree that General Welfare powers expand as humanities standards increase
It is more ideological that the courts knowingly reinterpreted the clause to allow for spending outside the scope of the Constitution, which immediately removed all restrictions on the federal government.
What is the point of enumerated powers if the gov is allowed to ignore them?
If the intent of the Constitution was to enumerate the rights granted by the citizens to its government and keep those limited, then there should have been a bit more careful wording in "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" since that can be interpreted to mean just about anything...
Which it doesn't, any more than the power to tax for the purpose of general welfare (which is part of the same phrase as the "common defense") gives Congress independent non-taxing power to provide for the general welfare outside of the grants elsewhere in the Constitution. There's quite a lot of conditions, etc., you can apply to liability for taxes, etc., that allow some substantive regulation to be plausibly included under the taxing power, but if you read the purpose limitation of the taxing power to instead be a positive grant of power independent of the taxing power, as you suggest, that one clause alone would shift the federal government under the Constitution into one of universal plenary power with only negative restriction instead of one of specific positive powers, and its quite clear that that was never the intent of that clause (as well as that interpretation being completely inconsistent with the actual words of the clause.)
The very first sentence of 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 defense and general welfare of the United States"
If education and welfare programs aren't "general welfare", I don't know what is.
Your comment reads like a trump legal filing. Literally citing cases that disprove your point.
You stopped short. You quoted the first paragraph but not the the supporting clauses. In fact, that preamble then goes into enumerating the specific federal powers.
If it was enough to say that taxes, duties, and excises could be levied and collected to pay for "common defense and general welfare", Section 8 would conclude with that sentence. There would be no need to follow that with explicit ennumerations.
Furthermore, we have a federalist government wherein we have a federal government with limited power. 10A wouldn't exist if this wasn't the case. Allowing the federal gov to tax for "general welfare" gives it unlimited power, which contradicts the very structure of the government.
Proper intro to S1A8:
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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;
Categorically, definitionally, and historically wrong.
What you are you are referring to is the following: “ Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: 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…”
First, “welfare” here means “the state of well being.”
Second, it is tied to the “United States” as a whole - not any given individual, especially because the Supreme Court has ruled the government has no duty to protect its citizens from harm (Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 1989; and The Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 2005).
Thus, if the Supreme Court has established that the government has no obligation to protect citizens from harm, it has no obligations to economically provide for citizens either. That’s called “charity” and it’s what churches have typically done by collecting revenue (tithing) from its congregants.
20th century governmental usurpation of charity by rebranding it as “welfare” is a distinctly modern concept, that also happens to be constitutional, insofar that the government collecting taxes to distribute benefits on a needs basis does not violate the Constitution, which is entirely different than being enumerated in the document itself, which you erroneously conflated.
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;
That's some pretty broad power that is enumerated right there.
Given that in Article 1 Section 8 is the following:
"The Congress shall have 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; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
highlight: "provide for the common Defense and general Welfare"
Seems to strongly indicate that clean water, clean food, medical, etc, are part of the "general welfare".
It’s in the Taxing and Spending Clause, it’s not as broad as to give powers to “do whatever we want as long as we can tie it to the welfare of a group.” The closest clause to that is the commerce clause.
It's a high-level goal or purpose for the government, right alongside "form a more perfect union", "establish justice", "insure domestic tranquility", "provide for the common defense", and "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity". It's a top-level overview to answer "Why the Constitution?"
It is not a blank check to let the Government take everything it needs in order to provide everything everyone wants.
Look at the size of the Federal Government before World War I (meaning, for more than a hundred years after the writing of the Constitution). Look at the lack of even an income tax before 1913 (except for briefly during the Civil War, IIRC). If you're going to argue that "promote the general welfare" meant redistribution, you're going to have to argue that for over a hundred years, everyone forgot about that and the government didn't do its job.
But if you say that it's an explanation of the overall intent (as understood by the people of the time), but with a meaning that falls far short of large scale redistribution, then the historical actions of the Federal government make perfect sense, and the current understanding of that phrase is what's out of line.
You claimed "the Constitution is an explicit grant of powers to the government (reserving anything else to the people), not an explicit grant of rights to the people", to which they responded that a lot of the Bill of Rights is an explicit protection of specific rights to people (such as in the First and Fourth Amendments [among others]; what rights are being granted the government in those amendments?)
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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."
Keeping its citizens safe would likely fall under general welfare.
That's only true if you use the definition of "broad powers" that was used back when the Constitution was written - which is very different from what it is today.
And all of those broad powers they wanted the government to have, were explicitly written into the text of the Constitution. Sometimes it was deliberately vague, like the Commerce Clause (although if you showed our modern jurisprudence on that to people who wrote it, they would be horrified). And in the Federalist Papers, there are several instances where some bit in the Constitution is explained as, "yes, this is rather broad, but the government needs it for real world reasons". But it is always enumerated.
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