Section 8 – Powers of Congress
“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;”…..
This general Welfare reference is even in the preamble of the constitution , so it would seem to be a specific item of agenda.
“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.”
While indeed one could debate the possible limits (James Madison) , or lack there of (Alexander Hamilton) , neither of these extremes really makes sense.
The James Madison flavored crowd would seem to want to extract “general welfare” from the middle of the first paragraph and some how declare it to be but a preamble / ceremonial phrase to the other enumerated powers that came before it and after it while having no real meaning itself.
The Alexander Hamilton flavored crowd would seem to want “general welfare” to be a blank check with no limits at all , sorta making enumeration pointless.
So since neither of those extremist views make sense , my conclusion would be that the
phrase general Welfare is an enumerated power like those that come both before it and after it , and that since the constitution tends to speak pretty plainly that it
is probably meant to be more reflective of it’s general dictionary meaning than flowery speech.
The term “welfare” is itself not without a dictionary meaning. So indeed lets take a brief look
at some common definitions.
[American Heritage Dictionary] Noun: health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being.
[Merriam Webster] Noun: The health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group.
[Cambridge Dictionary] Noun: HEALTH AND HAPPINESS
Strangely , “health” seems to be a very common part of the available definitions.
In researching the history of the time and even further back , the meaning
did not seem to somehow have morphed to something else but rather has always
had a basically similar meaning.
It’s not like the idea of providing social welfare is something some bleeding heart liberal dreamed up one day , as one can trace it’s existence from Roman times all the way forward.
Funny thing is that national health care used to be a Republican cause.Even tricky Dick
championed nationalized health care.
So, since both liberals , conservatives , dictionaries , the constitution and history all the way back to Roman times and even tribal cultures recognize this social need to support the general Welfare, what could possibly be the issue at hand today with the idea of implementing something that would support that general welfare such as a healthcare plan?
Certainly the constitution did not specify the exact programs that might be implemented by congress to support the general welfare , but it did not specify what weapons programs would be used to provide for the common defense either.
Perhaps McCarthy era political rhetoric of religious piety , and capitalistic might under the pressures of nuclear doom overtook it’s typical role as propaganda to become a national personality disorder and a distortion of the American fabric.
Having “Out of many, one” traded in for political rhetoric has indeed left us in a situation of having to explain away our own constitution to support those latter inferior wares.
