Article 1, Section 8 which is also known as the General Welfare Clause, could just as easily be known as the Debts Clause or the Common Defense Clause. It is in fact, a clause about taxation and what those tax dollars can be spent on, and reads as follows: “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.”
Section 8 includes not only this paragraph, but also a list of sixteen clauses of enumerated powers on which tax dollars can be spent, and at the end of this list is what is known as the Necessary and Proper clause which gives the government the authority to make laws that are of necessity in order to carry into action the enumerated powers. As such, the Necessary and Proper clause is not an open ended clause that provides unlimited authorities. It is another set of words that explicitly limit the power of the Federal government.
In other words, Congress does not have unlimited authority to tax and spend, as many believe, including Chief Justice John Roberts. Congress only has the authority to tax in support of enumerated powers. Congress does not have the authority to create a tax to fund an unconstitutional activity. If the activity is unconstitutional, so is the tax.
According to James Madison, who is known as the Father of the Constitution, the opening paragraph cites a general power about what the Congress can collect taxes for, and the 17 particulars that follow are the particular powers authorized by that general power. Madison also said that if the first paragraph was meant to be used as an unlimited authority for spending, then why include the list of particulars that follow.
As Madison had stated in Federalist Paper 41, “For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.” This explanation of Article 1, Section 8 by Madison was his attempt to alleviate the fears of many who said that this clause would be abused as an open ended power…..again, prescience on the part of those it has been concluded had no idea what was in store for the future. I can see those who attended the Philadelphia Convention stumbling out the door laughing at the notion that the new General government would have unlimited authority to tax and spend.
In the end, this means very clearly that most of what the Federal government spends money for, which includes all social programs, is unconstitutional. All social programs are unconstitutional because the authority to operate such programs is not an authority enumerated in the original Constitution nor was it added with a subsequent amendment.
Compassion is not a consideration when determining the constitutionality of an activity. The power to tax and spend, and the authority to tax and spend are two very different things. Federal politicians have the power to do whatever they want as long as there is no resistance, and they have used that power, along with their willing accomplices in the judiciary, to exceed the limitations placed on them by the Constitution. Everyone must remember that the Constitution was constructed to limit the power of the General Government while leaving all other powers to the People and the States.