Folks, who want the government to spend my tax dollars on all kinds of “social programs,” like to use the “general Welfare” clause of the preamble of the Constitution as a means to spend said dollars on everything from “No Child Left Behind” to, well, welfare.
I’m sure the meaning of the word “welfare,” like “gay” and others, has changed signficantly in the last 200+ years. What did the founding fathers really mean when they said they wanted the new government to promote the general Welfare?
And the preamble to the Constitution doesn’t give the government any powers. It’s a brief explanation of the purpose of the Constitution. If congress were allowed to use the general welfare statement to do something that they were not otherwise authorized to do, it would be thrown out immediately - if the general welfare statement had any substantive meaning, it would open the barn door to negate all the other places in the Constitution where the powers of the different branches are spelled out.
Article III.
The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.
I assume that that the items I put in italics are examples of measures that would be seen as necessary for “general welfare”, and that this was the context that the term was used in the second constitution ten years later.
Like CurtC said, the preamble doesn’t have any force of law, recent assertions to the contrary in GD notwithstanding. You’re thinking of Article I, 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 Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States”
The term general welfare didn’t have any special meaning to them that it doesn’t have to us. It was just intended to to say that Congress shall have broad discretion in taxing and spending for the betterment of the nation.
The word “welfare” had a very broad meaning in the colonial period, and was commonly used in colonial constitutions to indicate a broad grant of legislative authority.
When the imperial government wanted to signify in a colonial constitution that it was granting broad legislative authority to a colonial legislature or governor, it would often say that the legislature/governor had power to make laws “for the peace, welfare and good government” of the colony, subject only to the requirement that those laws not conflict with the laws of England. When used in this phrase, “welfare” had a very broad meaning, and was one of the accepted legal phrases to indicate broad legislative authority.
The phrase was used in this meaning in two colonial constitutions for Canada that were familiar to the American colonists: the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which established the first British constitution for Quebec, and the Quebec Act, 1774, which substituted a different constitution for Quebec.
The relevant phrase in the Royal Proclamation is:
The wording of the Quebec Act makes this broad meaning of “peace, welfare and good government” even clearer:
In other words, it was not possible to set out in the Quebec Act all the possible authorities that the local government would need in order to maintain the welfare and good government of the colony, so the British Parliament simply chose to give it a general power to legislate for the “peace, welfare and good government” of the colony.
The British government continued to use this phrase throughout the first half of the 19th century, to indicate a very broad grant of legislative authority. For example, in the Australian Constitutions Act 1850, the British Parliament used this phrase to assign general legislative authority to the various Australian colonies:
Given this well-established usage for the word “welfare” in colonial constitutions around the time of the American Revolution and afterwards, it seems reasonable to me that the drafters were using it with that meaning in mind in Article I, s. 8 - as a grant of broad legislative power.
First, I did mean “Article I, Section 8” and not the preamble. So, thanks to CurtC et al. for the corrections.
Second, why would the writers of the Constitution enumerate very specific powers to Congress and then state that anything else is left to the individual States (which would seem to cover all scenarios) and then add “Oh, by the way, although the powers have been delineated between the federal government and the State governments, we need to throw in a clause that says that we can pass laws on anything we want.” ??
Third, even if they did want a “grant of broad legislative power” (thanks for the detailed response, Northern Piper), they couldn’t have envisioned the somewhat-socialistic, overweening federal government that we now have. So, my question was, really, if the founding fathers looked at today’s federal government, what would they look at, shake their heads and say “Wait a minute! That’s not what we meant, at all!” ??
Well, with respect to your second question, the “general welfare” phrase isn’t used as a separate head of federal power - it’s used in the clause dealing with tax collection and expenditure. Although the examples I gave used the word as part of a grant of general legislative power, you always have to read a word in context. In the context of Article I, s. 8, I wouldn’t read “welfare” as broadly as when it was used in the Quebec Act; it’s being used to explain that in financial matters, the Congress will have substantial powers.
With respect to your third question, I guess I would have two responses. First, when drafting a constitution that is meant to last for a long time and cover all situations, good drafters will recognise that issues will come up that they can’t foresee. Hence, they tend to use broad language, to allow future generations to have as much flexibility as they wish. That’s particularly the case with economic policies, since the economy is never static.
Second, how can you be sure that all of the drafters would be free marketers, small government men, if they were transplanted to the present, and were informed of all the developments in the economy and society that have taken place since they were around? Would they say, “You should still be doing it the way we did it in the late 18th century?” Or would they say, “Given all the changes in society since we were around, we’re glad we provided enough flexibility in the Constitution for you to deal with your problems in your own way?”