Originally Posted by UKRNinUSA
preamble to the 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 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."
I read something in our local paper (Random Lengths) today about Blue Cross. It was fined $1million for "routinely" violating state law by cancelling individual health insurance coverage after policyholders got pregnant or sick, back in March of this year. Incidentally, the parent company of Blue Cross, Wellpoint Inc. made $3.1billion profit last year! Apparently further investigations into Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield, Healthnet and Pacificare are planned by California's Department of Managed Health Care.
The best health care system in the world - you are joking, aren't you? Unless best is a synonym for corrupt!
I understand what the Preamble says. And the Constitution itself, makes it perfectly clear that it has enumerated specific powers in order to establish the general welfare, and that Congress may NOT operate outside those limits, in any means, to accomplish any goal not specifically listed.
The specifically listed powers of Congress are the Constitution's definition of actions that promote the general welfare - AND ONLY THOSE ACTIONS.
As the 9th and 10th Amendments make crystal clear.
AS does the next line in the Preamble: Secure the blessing of Liberty. Of what? To whom? Hint: not the government.
"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." - President Thomas Jefferson
U.S. Supreme Cabal: McCulloch v. Maryland, regarding the 'necessary and proper' clause: The Cabal defined this as Congress may enact legislation within the powers (1) specifically enumerated by Article I, Section 8 and (2) that which reasonably "necessary and proper" in "carrying into execution" these powers and those elsewhere listed to Congress in the constitution (ie. certain amendments). In other words, Congress is strictly defined to very specifically enumerated powers and that which draws a reasonable relationship to these specific powers as a "means" of carrying into play their execution.
"[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." - James Madison, Federalist 14
"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." - James Madison, Federalist 45
"shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms [i.e. the terms “general welfare” and “necessary and proper”] be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions [i.e. the specific Art.1, Section 8 delineations of power] be denied any significance whatsoever? 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. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity." - James Madison, Federalist #41.
"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." - James Madison, 1792
"The Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed" - Thomas Jefferson, 1791
"Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been 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." - Thomas Jefferson, 1798
"
To consider the [general welfare clause]...as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they [Congress] please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, 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. It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up strictly within the enumerated powers." - Thomas Jefferson.
"This specification of particulars [the 18 enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8] evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 83
"No legislative act … contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 78
"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." - James Madison criticizing an attempt to grant public monies for charitable means, 1794
"I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon 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 so appropriate a dollar of the public money. . . We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity." - Congressman Davy Crockett, 1830
"[I must question] the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those … who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." - President Franklin Pierce, 1854
OK, maybe THIS guy was a tad hypocritical to this statement, later on: "As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other portant features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1930
~faith,
Timothy.
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