Congressman Tim Bishop referred to it in his town hall meeting.  If you ask a statist where does the Constitution authorize them to get involved in every detail of our lives, the only place they can point to is Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have 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; {my emphasis}

So what does the general Welfare mean?  Statists who claim the Constitution is a living breathing document believe that this clause gives them the right to do whatever they please, and whatever gets them reelected.  As conservatives we believe in original intent and therefore we have to go back to what the founders meant when they penned those words.  Why is that an important distinction?  Because the meaning of words change.

Are You Gay?

If you were asked that question in the eighteenth century, the questioner would have been asking you if you were merry; keenly alive and exuberant; having or inducing high spirits.  If asked that question today, the questioner wants to know if you are a homosexual.  So if the founders wanted to emphasize that the Constitution was a serious document and wrote, “nothing contained herein should be construed to be gay,” no one at the time would have raised an eyebrow, other than the dopiness of the clause.  If read in today’s context, it would create an uproar.

Are You Bad?

The band Huey Lewis and the News have a song called “Bad is Bad” in which the band plays on how the word “bad” now means ”good” in contemporary vernacular, but sometimes it actually means bad, really bad.  It shows how words change can change with time.  Back when the Founders wrote the Constitution and you said someone was bad, you might find yourself choosing dueling pistols.  Today, the response to the statement, “You’re bad,” would probably be, “Thanks, man.”

So if you don’t seek out the original meaning of the Constitution and our laws based on when they were written, everything can become meaningless over time.

What Did the Founders Mean by Provide for the General Welfare?

Alexander Hamilton was a proponent of a broad interpretation of the General Welfare and he supported that position during the Constitutional Convention.  However proposals along those lines, such as spending for internal improvements were rejected by the Convention.

“{James} Madison repeatedly argued that the powers to tax and spend did not confer upon Congress the right to do whatever it thought to be in the best interest of the nation, but only to further the ends specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution, a position supported by Jefferson.” — The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p.93

There was another interpretation that fit in the middle that even Hamilton recognized.  That was that the term “general” meant “national” welfare and not for purely local or regional benefit. President James Monroe demonstrated this

“in his 1822 message vetoing a bill to preserve and repair the Cumberland Road.  Monroe contended that Congress’s power to spend is restricted ‘to purposes of common defense, and of general,  national, not local, or state, benefit.” — The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p. 93.

Later President James K. Polk vetoed a bill that looked a lot like today’s runaway earmarks.

“It provided $6,000 for projects in the Wisconsin territory — constitutionally permissible because of Congress’s broader power over federal territories — but it included $500,000 for a myriad of projects in the existing states.  Polk contended that to interpret the Spending Clause to permit such appropriations would allow ‘combinations of individual and local interests [that would be] strong enough to control legislation, absorb the revenues of the country, and plunge the government into hopeless indebtedness.’” – ibid, p. 95

If you changed some of the numbers you could have written that today rather than in 1847.  Where this came off the rails, along with so many other government disasters we are paying for today, was during FDR’s tenure beginning in 1936.  Subsequent Supreme Court decisions left the definition of “General Welfare” up to Congress.  How ridiculous is that?  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor summed it up pretty well in her dissent in South Dakota v. Dole

“If the spending power is to be limited only by Congress’ notion of the general welfare, the reality….is that the Spending Clause gives ‘power to the Congress….to become a parliament of the whole people, subject to no restrictions save such as are self-imposed.’  This….was not the Framer’s plan and it is not the meaning of the Spending Clause.”

Out of Control Spending

The outrage demonstrated at the town halls shows that the American people are fed up with Congress ignoring what they are saying and bankrupting the country.  The Supreme Court in the 1930s opened the door to profligate spending by Congress that was kept in check by the Constitution for 140 years prior.  To allow Congress to define general welfare as they want and then spend accordingly makes no sense logically or otherwise.  If the Supreme Court does not set this right, a Constitutional Amendment may be required, and I am no fan of amending the Constitution at every turn.  As an American I take pride our Constitution that we have only felt a need to amend 27 times in over 200 years.  But if we allow changes in the definitions of words to drag the Constitution along with them, then we need to take measures to put the Constitution back where it was as a beacon to guide us rather than a quaint artifact of our history.

Something We Can All Look Forward To

President Obama announces His Budget Plan and the Stock Market Craters

President Obama got his $800 billion stimulus package off the launching pad and now we eagerly await the massive stimulus to come when people start seeing their taxes reduced in April by $8-$16 per week.  Stand back, the crowds could be euphoric and out of control.

With the ink barely dry on that package, President Obama rolls out the next attack on future generations of Americans.  His plan calls for the addition of debt so staggering that it may destroy the U.S. economy.  How long before the additional interest on the national debt starts growing so fast that we cannot pay it, let alone the principal?  In his budget he plans to add half a trillion to the national debt every year, and all of this is with some very rosy forecasts of 5% and 6% GDP growth.  Will someone please tell the rookie, that when you slam the most productive earners with more taxes, they tend to react by producing less.

“The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.”

The Reagan policies produced 25 years of unprecedented growth.  So the inexperienced President Obama is going to undo this because…?  The Democrats love to point to the economy during the Clinton years, but you have to look a bit more closely.  During the first two years of the Clinton’s time in office the economy was basically flat.  The economy didn’t really start moving until 1995.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Republicans took control of Congress.  Taxes were cut and the economy took off like a rocket.

If you look at the term of George W. Bush, after 9/11 and the recession he inherited, he again cut taxes and the economy took off.  The stock market didn’t start it’s downward spiral until about six months into 2007.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Democrats took control of Congress.  Coincidence?  You decide.

So now we have the new president deciding to trash the policies that have successfully grown the economy under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.  At the same time he is going to saddle future generations with massive debt on top of a looming Social Security and Medicare bill coming due.

I consider myself an optimist, but for the first time in my life I am actually fearful that one man could destroy the U.S. economy in his first 100 days and rush this in under the guise of an emergency, where there is no debate, no time to read what is getting put into law, just slam it in and trust the the most inexperienced president in the last century that it will be all right.  Do you feel better now?

Can We Dump this Canard Over the Side?

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years.

This economic inequality hogwash is dishonesty at it’s peak.  The so-called economic inequality is a sign of the success of the economy.  Think about it, the economy has a floor but not a ceiling.  That is, your income cannot go below zero, but there is no limit to how high it can grow.  So as incomes rise higher and higher, yes, they are going to move further from zero.  This is like saying that air travel is worse today than when the Wright Brothers flew because planes fly higher now than they did in 1903!  So let’s pass a law that says airplanes can’t fly higher than 2,000 feet so we don’t have a great inequality in altitudes.

There is nothing stopping anyone from having that high income if they work hard, use their talents, and succeed.  America is not about punishing the successful.  Many who start out at the bottom move up.  Many who came here as immigrants start at the bottom.  If the Democrats want to improve the numbers, let them control the illegal immigration that is probably inflating the numbers on the bottom.  Let’s stop turning success into failure.  How many people would like to be like Bill Gates?  How many people think America would be better off if we were all like Willy Loman?

The Big Flameout

The Productive Ones Set Sail to More Favorable Tax Climates

Let’s suppose for a moment that the stimulus works and the economy takes off.  With what President Obama has in the works, and the massive taxes that he plans to impose on the top earners, and the carbon taxes he plans to levy on businesses that weill be passed along to the consumers in higher prices (there goes your $8 tax break), and the masive debt he is loading on future generations, the stimulus will soon flameout, and a bigger recession will follow.  This time we won’t able to borrow and spend our way out of it.  Tax cuts won’t matter because there will be no one earning anything to tax.  The wealthy will have packed up and moved to more favorable tax climates and Barack Obama’s historic presidency will have flamed out as well.

“Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse” — Barack Obama, Op-ed piece in Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2009

Each day we wait…The most massive increase in government spending in the history of the Republic was passed on Friday night by the Senate, making it ready for President Obama’s signature.  Even Senator Sherrod Brown, had a private plane take him from his mother’s wake to cast the deciding vote on Friday night.

No Time to Read the Bill

Despite the enormity of this deficit spending increase that will saddle our children and our children’s children with a huge debt burden, and despite promises from President Obama concerning transparency and time to adequately review legislation, no one had the time to read this bill before it was passed.  You don’t believe me?  Do the math.  In 48 hours there are 2,880 minutes.  The stimulus bill is over 1,100 pages long.  So if you did nothing else for the 48 hours, you didn’t sleep, you didn’t eat, you didn’t go to the lavatory, you would have about 2 1/2 minutes to read and comprehend each page in the bill.

As President Obama said in the Post, we have no choice, this is URGENT!  So naturally, President Obama was standing with pen ready as soon as the Senate passed the bill.  It was raced up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to the waiting Chief Executive, or not.

• Friday night – President Obama does not sign the bill
• Saturday – President Obama does not sign the bill
• Sunday – President Obama does not sign the bill
• Monday – President Obama does not sign the bill

Pretty urgent, huh?  “Each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs.”  So I guess the crisis has passed?  I guess losing more jobs no longer matters?

Do you think it might have been prudent to give the members of Congress and the American people the extra four days to review the bill before signing it? Of course it would be prudent, but the more we examine this the more it becomes clear that this is not about stimulus.  It is about rushing through a bevy of liberal spending programs under the guise of an emergency precisely so that it would not receive the scrutiny it deserves, because if it did, most Americans would be outraged.

The reason for delaying the signing for four days, is to get the most political mileage out of the signing.  Signing it on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the Monday holiday, would simply not have the news coverage for President Obama to bask in.

American’s Interest or Self Interest

So despite all the rhetoric, the American people get a massive debt burden, the Democrats in Congress get all the spending goodies that have been stored in the closet waiting for the right crisis opportunity, and President Obama gets just the right amount of limelight.  Is that the change you were hoping for?