Undoing the American Republic with Welfare and Institutionalized Poverty (That's Why Welfare Reform is So Important)
Mandatory spending is spending that Congress legislates outside of the annual appropriations process, usually less than once a year. Out of a total budget of $3.8 trillion, $2.45 trillion was spend on mandatory spending. It is dominated by the well-known "earned-benefit" programs Social Security and Medicare (that is, people have money taken out of their wages for these programs). It also includes widely used safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), and a significant amount of federal spending on transportation, among other things.
Many mandatory programs' spending levels are determined by eligibility rules. For example, Congress decides to create a program like Social Security. It then sets criteria for determining who is eligible to receive benefits from the program, and benefit levels for people who are eligible. The amount of money spent on Social Security each year is then determined by how many people are eligible and apply for benefits, whether or not they have paid into the program. [Note: Congress does not decide each year to increase or decrease the budget for Social Security or other earned benefit programs. Instead, it periodically reviews the eligibility rules and may change them in order to exclude or include more people, or offer more or less generous benefits to those who are eligible, and therefore change the amount spent on the program].
Mandatory spending makes up nearly two-thirds of the total federal budget. Social Security alone comprises more than 1/3 of mandatory spending and around 23% of the total federal budget. Medicare makes up an additional 23% of mandatory spending and 15% of the total federal budget. [See: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ ]
The question is: Are these grants and other forms of assistance to the States constitutional? Perhaps such programs as Social Security and Medicare are constitutional, or at least at one time were (that is, when salary deductions for them were still considered a property right), but now they are simply considered another federal tax.
But what about the other programs?? Welfare (for the poor and the generational dependents), education funding, funding for transportation, state grants?
On the government's website (https://www.grants.gov/learn-grants/grant-policies.html; "A Short History of Federal Grant Policy"), there is this explanation:
Billions of dollars in Federal grants are awarded each year for programs and projects that benefit the public. This assistance is rooted in the Constitution and its call to "promote the general Welfare."
It wasn't until the 1970's, however, that Federal grant policy began to evolve into what it is today. The Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act, passed in 1977, set out to guide government agencies in their use of Federal funds - particularly by defining the roles of contracts, cooperative agreements, and grants. Contracts, the law states, should be awarded when a Federal agency is acquiring something - an improved computer network, for example. Grants and cooperative agreements, meanwhile, should be awarded when a Federal agency is providing assistance, such as funding for a lower-income housing program in an at-risk urban community.
The federal government, by law, has established a grant program (mandatory grants and discretionary grants) whereby it provides funding to the states as a means to further its policies or to coerce conformity among the states on matters it has no actual constitutional authority to legislate. These grants are contractual in nature and so, legally, if the particular state accepts the money, it agrees to the conditions attached to it. It's a matter of free will. And so the government achieves contractually, and coercively (because money is an attractive carrot) what it cannot achieve constitutionally. It is the means by which the federal government can control and coerce the States; it is the means by which the federal government can achieve an end-run around the Constitution and accomplish unconstitutionally what the Constitution legally does not allow it to accomplish. Federal grants to the states (grants-in-aid) are a primary mechanism that the federal government uses to extend its influence into state and local affairs.
The matter of federal funding and the coercion associated with it was addressed in 1987 with the Supreme Court case South Dakota v. Dole. The case centered on the constitutionality of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which was passed in 1984. Specifically the Supreme court was asked to consider the limitations that the Constitution places on the authority of the US Congress when it uses its authority to influence the individual states in areas of authority normally reserved to the states.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act (NMDAA) withheld 10% of federal highway funding from states that did not maintain a minimum legal drinking age of 21. South Dakota, which allowed 19-year-olds to purchase beer, challenged the law as an abuse of power, naming Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole as the defendant.
The Court, in a 7-2 opinion, upheld the statute's constitutionality. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, articulated a 5-point rule for considering the constitutionality of expenditure cuts of the type in the NMDAA:
The spending must promote "the general welfare."
The condition must be unambiguous.
The condition should relate "to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs."
The condition imposed on the states must not, in itself, be unconstitutional.
The condition must not be coercive.
Rehnquist concluded that the NMDAA met the first three restrictions and thus was a constitutional exercise of Congressional authority. Furthermore, he wrote that Congress did not violate the Tenth Amendment because it merely exercised its right to control its spending nor did the statute coerce the states since it cut only a small percentage of federal funding. According to Rehnquist, Congress applied pressure, but not irresistible pressure.
I believe the opinion was a poor exercise of judicial interpretation, and it hurts me to say that considering what a fan I usually am of William Rehnquist.
While contacts are always allowable, the question I ask is whether it is constitutional in the first place for the federal government to collect tax money for the purpose of doing something unconstitutional (even if it is by contract). I think it is an unconstitutional object of the taxing power. The power to coerce through funding is the power to coerce period.
If the federal government can use public funding to extend its authority, why can't a state government have its citizens withhold federal tax dollars and direct it to itself instead in order to further its state authority under the Tenth Amendment?
Federal grants, put simply, are not only an unconstitutional exercise of the federal taxing and spending power but act to distort and erode the critical balance of government power between the states and the federal government.
SEPARATE GRANT OF POWER OR QUALIFYING PHRASE?
The words "General Welfare" actually create something of a dilemma. Either the founders didn't really intend to create a general government of limited powers, or the General Welfare clause doesn't really mean unlimited federal authority to do things beneficial to the nation as a whole. What is it?
The answer, of course is easy. It's just not the convenient answer for the federal government.
The grant of power to "provide . . . for the general welfare" raises a two-fold question: (1) How may Congress provide for "the general welfare," and (2) What is "the general welfare" that it is authorized to promote?
The first half of this question was answered by Thomas Jefferson in his opinion (to President George Washington and the First US Congress) on the government's authority to establish a National Bank as follows: "The laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose." The clause, in short, is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power. Although a broader view has been occasionally asserted, and although Congress has acted under that assumption, the Supreme Court has NOT upheld that view.
Let's start by looking at construction:
The "General Welfare" clause, as one can notice and read, is set off by commas after the delegation of taxing power, for the purpose of clarifying WHAT the taxes collected are to be spent on. The powers enumerated in the following lines go into more specifics as to what Section 8 means when it says "to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States." The fact that the framers followed up the general welfare clause in Article I Sec. 8 with specific enumerated powers indicates the latter - a qualification on federal authority. If they had intended Congress should have the power to do virtually anything and everything to promote the general welfare, they wouldn't have bothered to include specific powers.
We don't need to speculate on what the "General Welfare" clause means and we shouldn't have to take the word of a politically-appointed Supreme Court justice. We only need to look at the explanation provided by the author of the Constitution himself, James Madison.
In a letter to James Robertson, dated April, 20, 1831, Madison makes quite clear that the phrase "for the General Welfare" is not a separate grant of power:
"With respect to the two 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."
The General Welfare Clause is not an enlargement clause, authorizing the government to tax and spend to pay the nation's debts, to provide for the common defense, and to do anything it wants for the general welfare. It is a clarifying clause, serving once again as a reminder the goals of the government. The goals, of course, are stated in the Preamble to the Constitution: "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...."
Again, if our Founding Fathers and drafters of the Constitution had intended Congress should have the power to do virtually anything and everything it wanted in order to promote the general welfare, they wouldn't have bothered to include specific delegations of power. If the government was intended to be one of unlimited and consolidated powers, what state would have ratified it? The truth is that the Constitution was sold to the States, through written and oral assurances, as one creating a common government of limited powers to serve the States and to carry out their common functions.
James Madison, as I hope everyone knows, was a primary author of The Federalist Essays, which became known as The Federalist Papers. Knowing that of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, only 39 signed it at the end (September 17). Some didn't sign because they had already left explained the convention and several didn't sign because they could not lend it their support. He also knew that some heavy hitters refused to even attend the convention because of grave suspicions of what the convention might try to do and that they would not support his Constitution in the state ratifying conventions. And in fact, during the ratification debates, Anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution voiced fears that people would come along and assert that the term "General Welfare" granted unlimited power to the federal government.
Madison, together with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, wrote the Federalist essays (ie, the Federalist Papers) as a means to explain each provision of the Constitution and for the purpose of providing assurances to the States as they contemplated whether to adopt it or not. In particular, the Federalist essays addressed the fears, the skepticism, the concerns of the Anti-Federalists (who had written a series of essays highlighting the defects in the new Constitution). The Federalist Papers, coming from the primary author of the Constitution, the man who called for the Convention, the man who provided the rough draft (rough outline) of the proposed new government), the man who attended each day, the man who took faithful notes of the proceedings and debates, the man who was almost universally perceived as being honest and trustworthy, and the man who most had a stake in seeing the Constitution through to its adoption (since it was his vision to scrap the Articles of Confederation) in favor of a new government), are without a doubt the most important and the primary authority on the meaning and intent of the US Constitution.
With that in mind, Madison addressed the scope of the General Welfare Clause in his Essay No. 41:
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, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
He went on, in Essay No. 41:
In a more remote stage, the imports may consist in a considerable part of raw materials, which will be wrought into articles for exportation, and will, therefore, require rather the encouragement of bounties, than to be loaded with discouraging duties. A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them. 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. 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.'
Again, the Federalist Papers, because of how wrote the essays and for the purpose they were written, are the primary authority on the meaning and intent of the US Constitution.
Madison further illuminated the intended meaning of the General Welfare Clause in a letter written to Edmund Pendleton in 1793, pointing out that the phrase was lifted from the Articles of Confederation and was intended to retain its meaning in the new Constitution.
"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. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other to misconstruction."
According to Madison, "the most important and fundamental question" with respect to the intent and meaning of the Constitution and the design of the government created was the meaning of and the relationship between the General Welfare Clause and the enumeration of particular powers in Article I, Sect. 8. This question, as he explained in Federalist No. 41, is the most "fundamental" because the answer determines the very "idea" or "nature" of the U.S. Constitution. It determines the ambition of the federal government. Legal scholars and commentators virtually agree that the clause was not a separate grant of power but rather a substantive grant of power for the generally-stated end (see the Preamble to the Constitution). They agree that the primary purpose of the ensuing enumeration was to define more particularly the ends alluded to by the phrase "General Welfare." Hence, the meaning of the general constitutional government in the American federal system is a government oriented to a limited number of limited ends.
I would argue then, that any "taxing and spending" for purposes not permitted under the enumerated powers, and in fact, reserved to the States per the Tenth Amendment, is impermissible and unconstitutional.
But we all know that the States are weak and the Supreme Court, because of its general aversion to cling to a meaning associated with an era long gone, intentionally ignores what our Founders have said and what they have written. They prefer to engage in their progressive way of interpreting the document in order to update it - which is merely a way of saying that they want to ignore the intended restraints on the federal government in order to transfer more and more power to it.
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