This morning’s post was written by Stephen L. Hall. Thank you so much, Stephen. Your insight, knowledge, and ability to make it possible for even an evil blonde like me to understand such things is greatly appreciated. –FR
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The most important, and the most misunderstood, phrase in the United States’ Constitution is one of the simple spending clauses. “Congress shall have Power to . . . provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States . . . .” Paragraph 1, Section 8, Article I, US Constitution. (That was not a misspelling, that was the way defense was spelled in 1787.)
Article I sets forth the particulars of Congress, the legislative branch of our republic. Section 8 sets forth the specific powers of Congress, as opposed to Section 9 with then sets out certain limitations of Congress. Sometimes structure is as important as the words. This authority comes in the first sentence, the first power, right after “the Power to lay and collect Taxes”, et cetera.
The Constitution is a document of enumerated powers, which means that if authority is not specifically granted the government in the document, then they have not such authority. If there is a qualification or limitation in the language, the government has not authority to go beyond that limitation. So, why did the founding fathers include the qualification of common and general.
“General Welfare” is the phrase which concerns us here, in legal circles referred to as the “general welfare clause”. Lawyers are not that creative in general. But before we delve in too deeply to the meaning of this clause, which is our intended purpose, I would like to relate a certain digression concerning an olde legal case.
A young boy found a jewel, and by jewel they meant a piece of jewelry, and when he sought to find out what it was took it to a goldsmith’s shop. After handing it over to the apprentice, the owner offered the boy money for the jewel, but the lad turned it down. The jewel was handed back to the lad, but the stones had been removed. That the shop owner was liable for the missing jewels taken by his apprentice is fairly simple, but it is the language used in assessing the value of the missing stones by the King’s Bench (the equivalent of the Supreme Court in England) which I wish to relate.
Testimony was taken to determine the value of “what a jewel of the finest water that would fit in the socket would be worth.” Further, the jury was instructed “that unless the defendant did produce the jewel and show it not to be of the finest water, they should presume the strongest against him and make the value of the best jewels the measure of their damages.” Armory v. Delamirie, 1 Str. 505 (K.B. 1722).
This was my favorite case in law school precisely because it employed such phrasing as jewel of the finest water, even though it was just a short summary of the case. There is a certain eloquence of the language which now is lost with people attempting, for simplicity’s sake, to eschew such euphemisms as finest water. The language of the Constitution, written in 1787, is not far removed from that common in courts of law in 1722.
The phrase, general welfare, must be read and understood in this context. The language, though eloquent was meant to convey a specific meaning, and was not merely a loose association of words thrown together. The phrase was specific and pregnant with meaning. General Welfare was their 18th Century way of expressing what modern economists call Public Goods.
A Public Good can be defined simply, without devolving into technical language, as a “good (or service) [which] may be consumed without reducing the amount available for others, and cannot be withheld from those who do not pay for it.” However, statists have a way of redefining words to favor their political perspective, particularly in economics. While this definition is both simplistic and formal, it omits certain considerations from the discussion of public goods which ought not to be so readily left off the discussion, primarily whether any good or service is an actual need or whether it is merely a want desired.
Economists are fond of giving the example of fireworks as a public good, e.g. http://faculty.winthrop.edu/stonebrakerr/book/public_goods.htm. However, a fireworks display is obviously not a necessity but a luxury. Which begs the question of whether a government should be spending taxpayer funds for such luxuries even if they are defined as public goods and which level of government should be responsible for the provision of such items.
Defense, specifically the common defense, is a prime example of a public good. An individual’s defense is not the responsibility of the government. The government does not protect individuals, it protects against invasion which threatens everyone. The federal government does not even protect the individual state, only the common defense of the United States as a nation. The second amendment is there to assure the individual of the means of protection, the army and navy are there to protect society itself.
Suppose the nation were invaded by Mexico. Someone living in Ohio or Tennessee, and the governments of such states, don’t really need to expend money for an army or a navy because any invader would have to fight their way through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Interior states could simply ignore threats against the country and let the burden of defense be the problem of the border States.
That is the essence of the public good, one could enjoy the safety and security while letting someone else pay for it. The border state would pay for their defense regardless. But the nation would be weaker as a whole with such shirking.
It is, however, the eloquence of the Founding Fathers which should be noted. With one single qualifying adjective they managed to convey all of the essence of concept of public goods and services which economists are still struggling and often failing to delineate. Not only did they do this once, but twice with the adjectives common and general. It only took the government a century to forget how to read that plain and simple English of the Founding Fathers.
The public nature of any good or service is the very reason governments exist. The only value of government lies in provision of public goods and services. The administration of the legal system, the building of roads, fire and police services, are all examples of public goods and services. Any government which goes beyond the provision of strictly public goods and services becomes a burden rather than a benefit to its citizens.
To know something, it is best to look at its opposite. To understand general welfare, perhaps we should define non-general, or particular welfare. Just as the word common in the phrase common defense, the word general in general welfare excludes the individual.
A payment to a specific individual may improve their individual or particular well-being, but it is of no benefit to other individuals who are not receiving such a payment. The same would be true for a service.
Our current welfare system writes checks to specific named individuals. When Joe Smith receives a check, you and I do not benefit from this government expenditure. It is not a public good. The person receiving the welfare is not paying for it, and the people paying for the welfare do not benefit from such payment.
In short, any program, Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Corporate Welfare, any subsidies such as those to help fund Planned Parenthood, government bailouts, and others too numerous to list, are particularized welfare, not general welfare.
As such expenditures are particular welfare not general welfare, they are not authorized by Paragraph 1, Section 8, Article I, of the US Constitution. That which is not specifically deauthorized, is unconstitutional. All social spending programs are thus unconstitutional, because they do not fall within that restriction in the Constitution. Social Spending is the entire basis for all leftist politics.
Niccolo Machiavelli, in his book The Prince, suggested to any would-be conqueror that if you were going to give away money in order to win people’s political support, make certain that it is not your own money. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America, observed, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Progressives at the turn of the 19th Century, figured out that by creating systems of particularized welfare, they could purchase the political support of segments of the voters using public funds by pretending that such social safety nets were actually general welfare authorized by the Constitution. That is the very reason they used the word welfare while completely overlooking the general restriction language.
Social spending is designed for only one purpose, to buy the votes and political support of some segments of the population using taxpayer money from the other segments of society. A classic divide and conquer strategy to divide America for crass political gain. You hear it in the Left’s words, America is two nations, the haves and the have-nots. The truth is that they have divided America into the taxed and the bribed.
Unfortunately, all of the Left’s tactics are hidden under the guise of “caring” for your fellow man . . . with someone else’s money.
Welfare: “the state of doing well especially in respect to good fortune, happiness, well-being, or prosperity.” Social spending, the growth of government debt to unconstitutionally give away public funds in a cynical effort to buy political support is antithetical to prosperity. Our government’s Welfare and Social Spending programs are provisions against the general Welfare not for it.
