Constitution Day
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men signed the U.S. Constitution. Each
year since 2004, we have celebrated Constitution Day as a result of legislation
fathered by Senator Robert Byrd that requires federal agencies, and every school
that receives federal funds, including universities, to have some kind of program
on the Constitution. I cannot think of a more deceitful piece of legislation
or a more constitutionally odious person to father it - a person who is known
as, and proudly wears the label, “King of Pork.” The only reason
that Constitution Day is not greeted with contempt is because most Americans
are totally ignorant about the framer’s vision in writing our constitution.
Let’s examine that vision to see how much faith and allegiance today’s
Americans give to the U.S. Constitution.
James Madison is the acknowledged father of the constitution. In 1794, when
Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection
in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia. James Madison wrote disapprovingly,
"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." Today, at least two-thirds of a $2.5 trillion
federal budget is spent on the “objects of benevolence.” That includes
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, aid to higher education, farm and business
subsidies, welfare, ad nauseam.
A few years later, James Madison’s vision was expressed by Representative William Giles of Virginia, who condemned a relief measure for fire victims. Giles insisted that it was neither the purpose nor a right of Congress to "attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require."
In 1827, Davy Crockett was elected to the House of Representatives. During
his term of office a $10,000 relief measure was proposed to assist the widow
of a naval officer. Davy Crockett eloquently opposed the measure saying, “Mr.
Speaker: I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much
sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House,
but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of
the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.
I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate
this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it. We have
the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please
in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar
of the public money.”
In 1854, President Franklin Pierce vetoed a popular measure to help the mentally
ill saying, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public
charity.” To approve the measure "would be contrary to the letter
and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which
the Union of these States is founded.” During President Grover Cleveland’s
two terms in office, he vetoed many congressional appropriations, often saying
there was no constitutional authority for such an appropriation. Vetoing a bill
for relief charity, President Cleveland said, “I can find no warrant for
such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power
and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual
suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”
Compared to today, yesteryear’s vision vastly differs in what congressional
actions are constitutionally permissible. How might today’s congress,
president and courts square their behavior with that of their predecessors?
The most generous interpretation of their behavior I can give is their misunderstanding
of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that reads, “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.” Misuse of the “general welfare” clause serves as
warrant for Congress to do just about anything upon which it can secure a majority
vote.
The framers addressed the misinterpretation of the “general welfare clause. James Madison said, in a letter to James Robertson, “With respect to the two 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 also said, “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 laid out what he saw as constitutional limits on federal power in Federalist Paper Number 45 where he explained, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."
Thomas Jefferson explained in a letter to Albert Gallatin, “Congress
has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those
specifically enumerated.”
What accounts for today’s acceptance of a massive departure from the framer’s
clear vision of what federal activities were constitutionally permissible? It
is tempting to blame politicians and yes we can blame them some but most of
the blame lies with the American people who are either ignorant of the constitutional
limits the framers imposed on the federal government or they have contempt for
those limits.
We can see this by imagining that, say, former presidents James Madison, Franklin
Pierce or Grover Cleveland were campaigning for the presidency today. Imagine
their saying to today’s Americans they cannot find: “a right to
Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents”,
“any authority in the Constitution for public charity”, or saying,
“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”
Their candidacy would be greeted with contempt by most Americans. They would
be seen as callous, mean-spirited men by a nation of people who have now come
to believe they have a right to live at the expense of other people through
a variety of federal programs. Such a belief differs only in degree, but not
kind, from the belief that one American should be forcibly used, through the
tax code, to serve the purposes of another American.
The tragedy is that once such a belief system becomes acceptable, it pays for
all Americans to become involved in the attempt to live at the expense of another.
If one American does not use government to live at the expense of another American,
that does not mean he will pay lower taxes. It only means that there will be
more money left over for others. In a word, or so, once legalized theft becomes
the standard, it pays for everyone to become a thief. A hundred years from now
what congress does and what is in the Constitution will bare absolutely no relationship
at all. As a result Americans will be poorer both in terms of liberty and standard
of living and they just might curse today’s generation.
Walter E. Williams
Ideas on Liberty - August 2006
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