RSSCongress Wants To Violate Constitution – Bush Threatens Veto
J.J. Jackson* | June 22, 2008
Liberals in Congress (both Republican and Democrat) are spending like drunken sailors yet again. Yes, they are still trying to provide yet another government handout to people that made bad investments and took on more risk than they could handle. But what else is new?
Congress sees themselves as adults and the rest of us as children that need to be placated with gifts when they should see themselves adults and much of the rest of America as children who need to be told loudly and clearly, “NO” most of the time.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A broad bipartisan coalition supporting a massive foreclosure rescue beat back GOP efforts to gut it Thursday, defying a White House veto threat and quashing a bid to make it victim to revelations about two senators’ VIP mortgages.
Administration officials said they oppose the inclusion of $4 billion in the measure to help states buy and rehabilitate foreclosed properties, and a plan to have government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) pay for the rescue.
They announced those and other objections as two GOP senators said they would try to block the package until a committee can investigate how much Countrywide Financial Corp. (CFC) and other lenders stand to gain from it.
No, I am not going to ask for you to show where in Article I such expenditures are allowed because I know that none of you liberals out there can and you won’t take the challenge. I’ve been asking for far too long and you have ignored my requests for you to step up and justify them. You can’t. We all know it but we also know you don’t care and will keep proposing such things anyway while saddling the taxpayers with the costs of more and more unconstitutional government spending.
The worst part of this is that it will be George Bush who will be seen as the “bad guy” in all this by far too many citizens who actually think, because they have either never read the Constitution or just don’t like the Constitution, that such things are legitimate functions of government.
The United Socialist States of America are alive and well and most Americans don’t care just so long as they get their own little piece of the handout pie. They don’t care because they believe it when the response from our government is, “Don’t worry children, mommy and daddy will always be there to pick you up and take care of your boo boos.”
When what Americans should be doing is demanding that government get out of our way and stop treating us like we are not smart enough or good enough to make it on our own without their aid beyond a few simple functions. Functions such as making sure we are defended against foreign invasion, that we have a right to seek redress from people that have harmed our rights (the court system), etc.
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15 Responses to “Congress Wants To Violate Constitution – Bush Threatens Veto”
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Article one, section eight states that Congress shall provide for the general welfare of the United States. The Constitution does not define what is meant by the term general welfare and people have been arguing different interpretations since at least Madison and Hamilton. You believe Madison is correct, liberals believe Hamilton was right. Until the Supreme Court makes a ruling that settles the matter, both you and the liberals can claim to be correct.
Unfortunately burt, you are incorrect.
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 Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”
At the time people were worried about what “general Welfare” meant. So Madison and the founders spelled it out and addressed this concern in Federalist 41.
“Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that 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,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.”
His response was:
“Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms “to raise money for the general welfare.”
But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?”
That settled the issue. The Constitution was ratified understanding that this was the meaning because it is the argument that was put forth.
End of discussion. This is the same OLD - VERY OLD argument liberals have been making for years in that the issue is not settled.
The fact is, that the issue was settled - except to liberals who think they are still arguing the definition of the word “is”.
Unfortunately burt, LP is correct. This is a settled debate here and there is no evidence to the contrary.
You can claim that some of the founders thought differently (and they did on a variety of issues), but the truth is that what the Constitution means was painfully spelled out in the Federalist Papers and used to justify its ratification.
As such the Federalist Papers contain the definitive answer.
Now, if you have some new evidence to put forth you may do so. But if this is going to be the extent of your argument then sadly you are wrong and will continue to be wrong.
Aw, but it is sure fun to watch people spin their wheels trying!
The question that needs to be answered but cannot be is if the “general Welfare” clause was meant as an unlimited mandate for the power of Congress to spend and tax why spell out a list of restrictions in the first place?
Why not just say, “Congress may tax the citizens up the whazzo and disperse the funds to their political allies as they see fit”?
What you are saying burt makes no sense and requires suspension of disbelief on a scale grander than ever before.
I see burt ward is back for another proper drubbing after licking his last series of wounds.
Important point of clarification. The Constitution says: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the … general Welfare of the United States” and then goes on to properly list these things that are part of the “general Welfare”.
It does not say, “provide Welfare to the citizens of the United States”.
The English language is best learned if one is to comment on documents written in it. It clearly is talking about the Welfare of the nation, not providing handouts to he citizens.
Quote after quote by the founding fathers are crystal clear that they did not believe that the wealth of one American should be confiscated and given to another. Very few believed otherwise and were in the minority. As such the Constitution would not reflect their views and cannot even be argued that it would.
Liberals can claim the welfare clause means something else but that is like claiming a camel is really a duck.
burt ward on June 22nd, 2008 3:56 pm:
“Until the Supreme Court makes a ruling that settles the matter, both you and the liberals can claim to be correct.”
The Constitution is the final authority on itself, not the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court only has the authority to affirm what the Constitution says, not rewrite it.
Excellent commentary all! Definitely lots of people smart enough to fall for word games played by liberals.
I would like to add my own observation. It appears that saying that because someone believed something, in this case Hamilton, that that belief must be given weight and credence would be on par with saying that because someone believes Bush was involved in 9/11 or that the Earth is flat that it must be given weight in the argument. It is preposterous on its face to make such a claim.
At the point when it came time to defend the meaning of the general Welfare clause of the Constitution against the anti-federalists it was not Hamilton chosen to express his minority views on the Constitution even though he had written other rebuttals. Madison was chosen because he expressed the majority opinion of the matter.
It makes entirely no sense to pen a Constitution whose meaning would change based on who controlled Congress. That, burt ward, is what you are asking everyone to believe the founders created however.
I figured the response would stop at Madison. Sorry y’all but case law tends to support the Hamiltonian interpretation more often than not. But hey why bother with those parts of con law that don’t fit into your view?
I figured we’d get a vapid response like that from you burt. Can’t refute the truth I suppose.
Lots of laws are unconstitutional. Lots of laws support those unconstitutional laws. But they are still unconstitutional laws.
Hmmm. Let me see. Lots of actual citations of original facts compared burt whose reasoning is equivalent to, if he says the oceans are made up of cottage cheese then they must be made up of cottage cheese.
Wow! Way to dazzle us with your (non)intellect!
Just because people have discarded what the Constitution says does not mean it doesn’t say it.
No burt, the argument didn’t “stop at Madison”. But nice attempt at yet another strawman.
Perhaps you should revisit the comments above and note that they went much further and explained why opinions other than Madison’s were not relevant to the issue.
The problem here is that you have hit a brick wall. And it is not an fake brick wall. It is a real one. You cannot go around it. But you are going to believe that you can. But try as you might you cannot. All that will happen is your head will hurt.
BTW some of the analogies you guys are coming up with are hysterical and absolutely prove the point. The problem is some people are wed to certain ideologies and can’t let go of them.
Next!
Even when given a second chance all we get from people like burt is a big “NUH-UH! THAT’S NOT THE WAY IT IS CUZ - CUZ I SAID SO!” Then we get the obligatory, “LOOK OTHER PEOPLE AGREE WITH ME SO I MUST BE RIGHT!”
Like Youlis Pap said, just because someone believes what you believe or believes anything at all doesn’t make them right.
Could you imagine this argument actually working in a court of law. I mean, I know it has because we have tons of laws that are upheld that are clearly unconstitutional. But think about it!
Liberal: “Your honor, I know I have a piece of paper that says I have to pay this man $500 because he did work for me and I know that I have another document right here explaining that I know I have to pay this man $500 but really I think that he should have to pay me $500 instead.”
Judge: “Excuse me?”
Liberal: “Well you see, I never really meant what I wrote and what I actually meant was that this man should pay me $500 and do the work for me.”
Judge: “You are joking right?”
Liberal: “Absolutely not judge and I have here a verdict in another case where a judge said that a man should not be bound by the very words he wrote and wrote in another document that he knew what he was writing.”
Judge: “Oh well then in that case …”
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard!
You said it.
Very well put and impossible to dispute. The fact is that the Constitution is a proclamation of limited powers otherwise it wouldn’t be necessary to have a Constitution.
Liberals spend so much time arguing about what the clear language says and trying to make everything murky because they can only win when it is murky.
Madison wrote the explanation about what was meant and Hamilton had to sit and watch. Had Hamilton been chosen to express the meaning of the general Welfare clause the Constitution would never have been ratified because neither the Federalists nor the anti-Federalists wanted large government.
The battle was between to sets of believers in limited government with only a few outliers like Hamilton along for the ride. No one would have asked the King of England his take on the general Welfare clause nor accepted his explanation because his was not the view to be considered. So too with Hamilton.