General Welfare, Necessary And Proper, And Other Vague Constitutional Clauses

One of the most common arguments I've heard and read from Lefties about why health care should be a right and guaranteed to everyone is the notion of providing for the 'general welfare' of citizens, or doing whatever is 'necessary and proper' for citizens.  Those phrases are mentioned in several places in the Constitution, and seem to be what living-breathing-document types use to justify all manner of things they feel should be government handouts.  Here's a nutshell of the argument of the big one, general welfare:

Of all the limitations upon the power to tax and spend, the General Welfare clause appears to have achieved notoriety as the most contentious. The dispute over the clause arises from two distinct disagreements. The first concerns whether the General Welfare Clause grants an independent spending power or is a restiction upon the taxing power. The second disagreement pertains to what exactly is meant by the phrase "general welfare."

The two primary authors of the Federalist Papers essays set forth two separate, conflicting theories:

• the narrower view of James Madison that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax;^[16][17] and
• the broader view of Alexander Hamilton that spending is an enumerated power that Congress may exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture or education, provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other.^[18]

It seems to me that this basically comes back to the notion of how much power the federal government is supposed to have.  Those who think the federal government should be big and powerful will follow Hamilton's reasoning; those who (like me) want the federal government as limited as possible will follow Madison's argument.

Heritage addresses this subject in much greater detail, along with some key historical background.  This is good stuff:

The "General Welfare" clause gives Congress 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."  This clause is not a grant of power to Congress (as constitutional law professor Gary Lawson has shown). It is a limit to a power given to Congress. It limits the purpose for which Congress can lay and collect taxes.

During the founding, some Anti-Federalists were concerned that this clause "amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare." But James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," explained very clearly that it granted no power to Congress. If the "General Welfare" clause gives Congress the power to promote the general welfare, then why specifically list the other powers in Article I, such as the power to establish post offices and post roads, or to coin money? Wouldn't it be redundant to list them?

In short, as Madison argued, Congress derives no power from the general welfare clause, which merely serves to limit Congress's power to lay and collect taxes.  Congress can only do so for purposes of common defense or general welfare, in the service of the powers granted to it elsewhere in Article I.

Second, "Necessary and Proper" gives Congress the power "to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States."  Like the general welfare clause, this clause was not a stand-alone grant of power to Congress.  Rather, it authorizes Congress to make laws that are necessary (and also proper) to make the other grants of authority in Article I effectual.

In other words, the necessary and proper clause cannot itself authorize national public health insurance.  One would have to show that national public health insurance is necessary and proper to execute some other power granted in the Constitution.This puts the proponents of nationalized healthcare back where they started.

Lastly, proponents might argue that national health insurance is part of Congress power "to regulate commerce…among the several states."  While progressives have often used this clause to expand the federal government, it does not apply especially to the creation of a national health insurance, because to create and engage in commerce is not the same thing as regulating commerce among the several states.

Nobody during the framing generation expected the commerce clause to expand the federal government's authority to anything relating to or resembling commerce.  James Madison wrote that it is a power "which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained."  The clause was designed to prevent some states from taxing goods that passed through their boundaries as those goods proceeded to market.

In case proponents of government healthcare latch on to another clause, the three clauses above and rest of Constitution are explained in depth in the Heritage Guide to the Constitution .

Of course, most progressive advocates of national health insurance are unconcerned whether the Constitution authorizes such a law when a pseudo-constitutional reasoning to reach the desired result will suffice.  But constitutionalists should not allow such attempts to dismiss the Constitution go unanswered.

Sorry, libs, your attempts to twist the Constitution into justification of your fad du jour just don't hold water.

Even aside from micro-parsing of small phrases, the whole concept of nationalized health care flies in the face of the heart of the Constitution.  If you take a step back and look at the Constitution itself, its foundation, and the articulated motivations of the Founders, it is obvious that they put as many restrictions and limitations on the centralized federal government as possible.  That's essentially the entire point of the 10th Amendment:

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.

The only things the federal government were allowed to do have been specifically outlined; everything else is a no-no.  Even those general clauses are limited - they can only enable the federal government to carry out other specified duties, not create entirely new ones out of thin air.

There is no legitimate way to interpret these clauses into a mandate for health care.

There's my two cents.