On Private vs. Govt. Assistance
From Ernest, in response to this article I sent him, entitled Charities are for Suckers by Ted Rall:
http://tinyurl.com/ankc5
I don't get it. Why is it necessarily the fed governments responsibility to pay for everything? First of all, I thought the gov just allocated 60 billion dollars towards relief. So the claim "because the government refuses to help them" is just as much of an exaggeration as the comparison of Katrina to the holocaust ("...levee break that turned Katrina into a holocaust").
So anytime someone has a personal tradegy, the government is supposed to pay money to people? That means they have to make decisions about defining what's a tragedy and what's not. If someone's parent dies in a car accident, or from cancer, is the gov supposed to pay the family? If they don't, they're implicitly saying the loss of a parent isn't as bad as losing a house in New Orleans. "The U.S. government can easily pick up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather" You really think it's wise for the gov to dish out money to people everytime they're "inconvenienced?" If it's -60 in Fargo, is it the gov responsibility to buy me a heater so I don't freeze to death? I prefer that they spend money on national security, health care, and education. Not that they shouldn't spend money on citizens or relief efforts, or tax the super rich heavily, but the gov shouldn't be soley responsible for "dishing out money" everytime someone suffers or is incovenienced. The debt is bad enough. I think Ted Rall is a sucker, so it's surprising to me that he's not in favor of charities.
My response to Ernest:
I don't think anyone is suggesting the government pay for personal tragedies. I think there is a stark difference between a parent dying and a city being destroyed -- a city built around this country's most important port, a city which has been physically weakened over the years because of its necessity as a port. The environmental damage to the delta that allowed the full brunt of the storm to hit was a direct result of the commerce and trade up and down the Mississipp River, all of which reaped taxes to the government and profits to the wealthy. The government, in turn, allegedly has not done what has been necessary to protect that enterprise through levee reinforcement, environmental protection, tackling political corruption, etc.
So from a purely corporate standpoint, it is in the interest of government to protect and rebuild New Orleans. So why should the government "dish out money" to the people who lived there? Because the people of the city are a big part of what makes the city in the first place. You can't rebuild the port and the infrastucture and leave the people to flounder. This is, believe it or not, a civilization, a society. There is a distinct responsibility of a society to take care of its people. Only recently has the US government bent over backwards to thwart that responsibility. Even in a monarchy it was the responsibility of the King to take care of his subjects. We booted the monarchy in favor of something better. It IS the responsibility of our government to take care of us when we cannot take care or ourselves.
Somehow the line in the Declaration about the Pusuit of Happiness has evolved to mean the govts sole purpose is to protect the property of the rich.
Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
What the hell else is the government supposed to do in times like these? Spend $600 billion of OUR money destroying someone's country?"
http://tinyurl.com/ankc5
I don't get it. Why is it necessarily the fed governments responsibility to pay for everything? First of all, I thought the gov just allocated 60 billion dollars towards relief. So the claim "because the government refuses to help them" is just as much of an exaggeration as the comparison of Katrina to the holocaust ("...levee break that turned Katrina into a holocaust").
So anytime someone has a personal tradegy, the government is supposed to pay money to people? That means they have to make decisions about defining what's a tragedy and what's not. If someone's parent dies in a car accident, or from cancer, is the gov supposed to pay the family? If they don't, they're implicitly saying the loss of a parent isn't as bad as losing a house in New Orleans. "The U.S. government can easily pick up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather" You really think it's wise for the gov to dish out money to people everytime they're "inconvenienced?" If it's -60 in Fargo, is it the gov responsibility to buy me a heater so I don't freeze to death? I prefer that they spend money on national security, health care, and education. Not that they shouldn't spend money on citizens or relief efforts, or tax the super rich heavily, but the gov shouldn't be soley responsible for "dishing out money" everytime someone suffers or is incovenienced. The debt is bad enough. I think Ted Rall is a sucker, so it's surprising to me that he's not in favor of charities.
My response to Ernest:
I don't think anyone is suggesting the government pay for personal tragedies. I think there is a stark difference between a parent dying and a city being destroyed -- a city built around this country's most important port, a city which has been physically weakened over the years because of its necessity as a port. The environmental damage to the delta that allowed the full brunt of the storm to hit was a direct result of the commerce and trade up and down the Mississipp River, all of which reaped taxes to the government and profits to the wealthy. The government, in turn, allegedly has not done what has been necessary to protect that enterprise through levee reinforcement, environmental protection, tackling political corruption, etc.
So from a purely corporate standpoint, it is in the interest of government to protect and rebuild New Orleans. So why should the government "dish out money" to the people who lived there? Because the people of the city are a big part of what makes the city in the first place. You can't rebuild the port and the infrastucture and leave the people to flounder. This is, believe it or not, a civilization, a society. There is a distinct responsibility of a society to take care of its people. Only recently has the US government bent over backwards to thwart that responsibility. Even in a monarchy it was the responsibility of the King to take care of his subjects. We booted the monarchy in favor of something better. It IS the responsibility of our government to take care of us when we cannot take care or ourselves.
Somehow the line in the Declaration about the Pusuit of Happiness has evolved to mean the govts sole purpose is to protect the property of the rich.
Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
What the hell else is the government supposed to do in times like these? Spend $600 billion of OUR money destroying someone's country?"
posted by Chuck & Erin at Thursday, September 15, 2005
2 Comments:
There seems to be some disagreement as to what the word "welfare" means with regard to the phrase "general welfare" as it appears in the Constitution. As you presumably know, the Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes to “provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.” But since the New Deal, this clause has been pretty much boiled down to one phrase: “general welfare.” It is now generally assumed that Congress may pass any law it deems in the “general welfare” of the United States.
The “general welfare” clause is mentioned twice in the U.S. Constitution: first, in the preamble and second, it is found in Article 1, Section 8.
The preamble reads:
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The preamble is not a delegation of power to the federal government. It is simply a stated purpose defining the two major functions of government: (1) ensuring justice, personal freedom, and a free society where individuals are protected from domestic lawbreakers and criminals, and; (2) protecting the people of the United States from foreign aggressors.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution refers to the “general welfare” thus:
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. . .”
We all know the meaning of words can change over time. In order to more accurately assess the meaning of the word "welfare", with respect to it's use in the Constitution, Here is how the word "welfare" was defined 40 years after it was written in the Constitution, via the 1828 edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language.
WEL/FARE, n. [well and fare, a good going; G. wohlfahrt; D. welvaart; SW. valfart; Dan. Velfard]
1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; Prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.
2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applied to states.
A clear distinction is made with respect to welfare as applied to persons and states. In the Constitution the word "welfare" is used in the context of states and not persons. The "welfare of the United States" is not congruous with the welfare of individuals, people, or citizens.
The Founding Fathers said in the preamble that one reason for establishing the Constitution was to “promote the general welfare.” What they meant was that the Constitution and powers granted to the federal government were not to favor special interest groups or particular classes of people. There were to be no privileged individuals or groups in society. Neither minorities nor the majority was to be favored. Rather, the Constitution would promote the “general welfare” by ensuring a free society where free, self-responsible individuals - rich and poor, bankers and shopkeepers, employers and employees, farmers and blacksmiths - would enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
Quoting the Tenth Amendment, Jefferson wrote: “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
The Tenth Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Writing about the “general welfare” clause in 1791, Thomas Jefferson saw the danger of misinterpreting the Constitution. The danger in the hands of Senators and Congressmen was “that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.” Unlike public officials during Jefferson’s time, our modern-day legislators have a very loose interpretation of the Constitution. The result is that government has mushroomed into a monolithic bureaucracy.
It is NOT the government’s business (constitutionally) to “help” individuals in financial difficulty. Once they undertake to provide those kinds of services, they must do so with limited resources, meaning that some discriminating guidelines must be imposed. (so many who need that kind of help- so little resources to provide it.)
In Federalist No. 41, James Madison asked rhetorically: “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? ”
Madison was replying to anti-Federalist writers who had warned that the “general welfare” clause opened the way to unlimited abuse. He haughtily accused those writers of “labour[ing] for objections” by “stooping to such a misconstruction” of the obvious sense of the passage, as defined and limited by those powers explicitly listed immediately after it.
Like so many things the Federalists said could never, ever happen, it happened. The “general welfare” clause is constantly abused in just the way the pessimists predicted. The federal government exceeds its enumerated powers whenever it can assert that other powers would be in the “general welfare.”
The Federalist Papers are one of our soundest guides to what the Constitution actually means. And in No. 84, Alexander Hamilton indirectly confirmed Madison’s point.
Hamilton argued that a bill of rights, which many were clamoring for, would be not only “unnecessary,” but “dangerous.” Since the federal government was given only a few specific powers, there was no need to add prohibitions: it was implicitly prohibited by the listed powers. If a proposed law — a relief act, for instance — wasn’t covered by any of these powers, it was ipso facto unconstitutional.
Adding a bill of rights, said Hamilton, would only confuse matters. It would imply, in many people’s minds, that the federal government was entitled to do anything it wasn’t positively forbidden to do, whereas the principle of the Constitution was that the federal government is forbidden to do anything it isn’t positively authorized to do.
Hamilton too posed some rhetorical questions: “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?” Such a provision “would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power” — that is, a power to regulate the press, short of actually shutting it down.
We now suffer from the sort of confusion Hamilton foresaw. But what interests me about his argument, for today’s purpose, is that he implicitly agreed with Madison about the narrow meaning of “general welfare.”
After all, if the phrase covered every power the federal government might choose to claim under it, the “general welfare” might be invoked to justify government control of the press for the sake of national security in time of war. For that matter, press control might be justified under “common defense.” Come to think of it, the broad reading of “general welfare” would logically include “common defense,” and to speak of “the common defense and general welfare of the United States” would be superfluous, since defense is presumably essential to the general welfare.
So Madison, Hamilton, and — more important — the people they were trying to persuade agreed: the Constitution conferred only a few specific powers on the federal government, all others being denied to it (as the Tenth Amendment would make plain).
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, once observed: “Our Constitution professedly rests upon the good sense and attachment of the people. This basis, weak as it may appear, has not yet been found to fail.”
Veto of federal public works bill
March 3, 1817
To the House of Representatives of the United States: Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," and which sets apart and pledges funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense," I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce with a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are insusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
James Madison,
President of the United States
"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, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546
"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 constitutents. " - James Madison, regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794
"With respect to the 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, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. " - Thomas Jefferson
“Our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin (June 16, 1817)
It appears that, contrary to the claims by many, Congress does not have broad and sweeping powers. Nor was it the intention of the founders to give Congress any.
Once the government opens its arms (and bank accounts), it divides the citizens into two groups: those who receive direct (personal, individual) benefit from the government, and those who do not. That is why the founders designed a FEDERAL system of government that provided only for the “GENERAL” (meaning- non-specific) WELFARE of the people by confining its services to things like “national defense” and “interstate commerce”. It leaves to the states the issues of HOW or WHEN other services are provided to specific sub-groups. HOWEVER (This is critical) the new government must represent the BEST INTERESTS of all the people, which logically means that it MUST be limited in scope, for the MORE a government undertakes, the more oppressive it becomes. Government MUST be ANCHORED in fundamental principles.
If you advocate for federal spending on social welfare programs, you are describing a redistribution of income (MY income) for the benefit of Specific individual citizens INSTEAD of (for example) a strong national defense. Which of those activities is the government LEGALLY REQUIRED to perform? (hint: Art. I, Sec. 8, U.S. Constitution.)
If the Federal government MUST do certain things, and something is NOT EXPRESSLY STATED in the constitution as a duty of Federal Government, then HOW (or WHOM) should any other services be provided? (Hint: Tenth Amendment)
Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population today can grasp such nuances. Too bad. The Constitution wasn’t meant to be a brain-twister.
www.lawandliberty.org
www.freerepublic.com (2001)
www.sobran.com (1999)
http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fedindex.htm
Now, having said all of that...
I believe the government has a responsibility to "take care of" people in these situations because of all the illegal taxing, policies, laws and such that they have done that have turned us into a nation of people who have no other choice but to rely on the government... it is the masters responsibility to take care of the slaves.
Bring us back to our Constitutional roots and much less, if any, will "have to" come from the government because people will have more money to help themselves and also the more money people have the more they are willing to help others that are in need.
Just like the more control/rights you have over your property... the more you feel it's yours and that you're not leasing it from the government... the better you will take care of it and invest in it.
And somehow after all of that you bring the whole of the Constitution back to your money and property, when in all that you allegedly wrote to me nothing mentions anything about money, property OR the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration on Independence mentions the pursuit of happiness -- not the Constitution -- and was part of the reasoning to free us from England. I don't intend to pull out the 1776 Merriam-Webster, but laissez-faire, hands off corporate entities is by far a greater stretch of definitions, than is the requirement of a government to take care of the citizens in its society.
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