Oh wait here’s more:
I’m saying that if you interpret that line that way, so long as you call any law as intended for the “general welfare” then nothing is off limits. Those two words unravel the rest of the constitution if interpreted that way.
Yeah, and that’s the point. It’s giving the government the power to grant patents and copywrites, for the purpose of creating an environment more condusive to scientific discovery. Similarly to above, you are looking at the descriptive text and ignoring the operative text. That line does not say “the government can do whatever it wants to promote science”
Okay, so how should “general welfare” be interpreted?
Well there you go since its “general welfare” then that stuff is constitutional. Which does not invalidate the OP, because we are arguing over whether issues like health care should fall under the idea of “general welfare”.
However, the OP is still a bunch of foolishness, because only people whose party is in power are going to say it. If you can’t support the other party saying it, then STFU. (IMO both R’s and D’s suck in their own very unique ways, and it would be nice to be able to get a legitimate 3rd party with enough backers to actually provide some competition. Which said competition would probably end up as worthless as the first two, but it would be nice to have more options.)
You are failing to understand the difference between the powers granted and the reason for those powers.
Congress has the power to levy taxes, etc comma to pay debts and provide for defense and the general welfare.
In this case, congress’ power is to levy taxes. They may levy taxes for any of the reasons provided: to pay debts, to provide for common defense, and for the general welfare of the US.
It isn’t that congress can do whatever they want as long as it is for the general welfare of the country. That is a wrong interpretation. It does not follow the language, nor does it make sense with the rest of the sentence. You seem to believe that this wrong interpretation is the one everyone is using, and you are also wrong about that.
Congress can levy taxes. The obvious and intended counterpart to this power is the power to spend. It’s the feds money, they can do more or less what they want with it, as long as it is for the general welfare.
Please, feel free to actually show me your interpretation, beyond some handwaving and bluster. I would really like to know what sort of laughable basis you have for saying that the constitution actually doesn’t give the congress the ability to pay for things or to levy taxes.
Ooops - my bad ivn on second reading, I am misinterpreting. thanks for the clarification!
I should have quoted. That was aimed at SenorBeef. But I am glad I could clarify how the tax and spend power works.
Last time I checked the interpretation of the Constitution is held by the Supreme Court, and not you, me, or anyone else. So is your problem with Congress’ use of it granted powers under the Constitution, the Executive’s use of it granted powers under the Constitution, and/or the Court’s use of it granted powers under the Constitution?
Or maybe perhaps, your tighty whiteys are reducing blood flow to your organ that is supposed to function properly? Finally is your cause for concern based on a universal contempt for the “government” or only when the current elected cadre of infidels in Washington not of the same political bent that you may be?
I’d need to do some more research on the nuances and history of it, but my basic understanding is that it’s a limiter on the type of spending allowed by the other enumerated powers.
“General” welfare indicates that what spending Congress does is for the general welfare of the nation, rather than the specific welfare of any particular group or locality. A specific prohibition on all sorts of things, like a lot of earmarks and pork where federal money is used for what should be a local and state matter, or the sort of grants we see the federal government holding over states to control them. Along with the prohibition for congress to favor specific industries or areas.
So the section means that Congress can tax and spend in order to fund laws it has the powers to create, with the further limitation that it must be for the general national welfare.
From here:
I found that article when searching for that Jefferson quote. Aside from the quote, the rest of the text is written by the author of that article - but it explained well enough that I decided to quote the whole part. That is pretty much a direct rebuke by a main writer of the constitution to the idea that “general welfare” means Congress can do just about anything.
I recommend reading the rest of the article.
Bolding mine.
You don’t see the contradiction there?
I did not dispute the idea that Congress doesn’t have the power to levy taxes and pay for things. It just has to do so in line with its other enumerated powers. I simply said that the vast majority of laws passed currently fall outside of the scope of those enumerated powers.
Eh, they’re a product of precedent and the demands of their time. If the population all wanted government censorship of TV, for example, I’m sure the Supreme Court would figure out an interpretation that didn’t violate the first amendment.
My problem is (as it pertains to this thread) Congress use of powers that are not granted to it, and which are clearly the domain of state or local governments - or no one.
Did you not see my posts earlier? Not a teabagger. Not a republican. I posted this stuff all throughout the Bush years too. I am not one of those douchebags who is suddenly concerned about the constitution when the opposition party is in office.
I haven’t even actually made the case in this thread that these laws are even a bad thing, or that it’s a bad thing that we’ve moved beyond using the constitution as a governing document. I’ve only made the case that we aren’t - and that I find it silly that people still nitpick the constitutionality of something like everything else is a-ok constitutionally.
Then move to a country without a Constitution then. Problem solved.
I was under the impression that the constitution empowered congress and various state and local govenmental institutions to make laws. The fact that there is nothing about median left turn lanes in the constitution would therefore not be a problem with regard to making it illegal to camp out in one.
However, I am not a moron, or at least not a complete moron, so persons who are may disagree with me on this.
This is irrelevant to the issue at hand. State and local governments are indeed able to make their own laws in this regard, and each state has its own constitution that governs the powers of that state’s congress. The federal constitution is a blueprint for the operation of the federal government, and it has no business writing laws relating to left turn medians, so I don’t know what point you think you’re making.
Take a second look!
(Bolding mine.)
The crust of the biscuit here is all of this is your interpretation, which means nothing in the grand scheme of things. The framework of the Constitution grants that interpretation to the Supreme Court. Then you appear to deny the existence by claiming the Court is in cahoots with Congress and everyone else in the Dark Side. Assuming this comment as a truth, that says to me the entire system is tainted, and if my thought process here is accurate, the only remedy is throw the baby out with the bathwater and start over. Are you advocating that?
(With that last comment I may not be in total disagreement if you were to support it. My gut feeling – that I’m still trying to resolve myself without hiding under a tinfoil hat – is this Grand Experiment of 200 plus years may have run its course. Coupled with this economic mess we are in, along with a polarization of society across practically all fronts and we have the base ingredients for the Perfect Storm. But I digress.)
I do note the OP appears to have abandoned this thread. Perhaps the forking of comments deserves its own thread since the OP has left us.
Naw, I was just lazy and didn’t read far enough into the thread to see that you were using “unconstitutional” in a unique and abnormally limited sense, as opposed to the usual “explicitly in contradiction to something that’s specifically laid out in the constitution.”
But now that I’ve wasted the time getting up to speed on your particular brand of foolishness, it appears that your actual position is that you, and you alone, are qualified to assess what the correct interpretation of the constitution is, and what the scope all the secondary and tertiary implications of things said in the constitution are. Presumably you have this authority because you’re god-king of the universe - which would be all well and good, except the constitution explicitly states which body has the authority to interpret it, and that’s not the god-king, it’s the US supreme court. Therefore, your rejection of their findings of constitutionality is itself unconstitutional, and any assessments you make about the constitutionality of laws that contradicts with theirs is similarly explicitly incorrect under the terms of the constitution itself.
Unless you feel that you can cherry-pick the constitution and leave out the bit where it establishes the supreme court. But that makes your position kind of inconsistent, I would say.
The best of both worlds. A veritable cornucopeia.
You are aware that the Court’s ability to decide if a law is Constitutional was established in Marbury v. Madison, not by the Constitution itself, right? So ignoring this ability just means ignoring their conclusion in that case, not the Constitution itself. It means saying they didn’t have the power to confer such power upon themselves, so you can safely ignore their decision.
And, furthermore, what person arguing their position doesn’t think that they are right and the opposition is wrong? If they didn’t think they were right, why would they be arguing at all? I’ve always found the so-called counterargument “What gives you the right to have a divergent opinion?” to be inherently stupid.
I’m still unable to glean specific, concrete examples of unconstitutionality from SenorBeef. He’s gone on about, apparently, the delegation problem, and some yammering about how NASA isn’t for the general welfare because it doesn’t benefit everyone equally, or something like that.
And even better is that his only cite is an economist from the Cato institute. Well, thread over, I guess.
Huh, who knew. Do you suppose he has an argument that Marbury v. Madison is unconstitutional?
What are you talking about? I was demonstrating that his own position was inherently self-contradictory*. He rejects the supreme court’s authority in determining constitutionality, but its authority is constitutionally based*, meaning that in rejecting it he’s cherry-picking the constitution like it’s the frikking bible - and using this as a starting point to accuse the government of cherry-picking the constitution. So the problem isn’t that he’s arguing a position. The problem is that his position is an incoherent self-contradictory pile of cognitively-dissonant horseshit. There’s a difference.
- on the assumption that the Supreme Court is not unconstitutional