New Diagrams and the General Welfare Clause
October 27th, 2009
I posted a couple of new diagrams on the home page over the weekend. One of them illustrates my conception of proper Republican government, and the other helps illustrate the imbalance we have right now in the control government has over our lives. In reality, working as a legislator at the federal level should be one of the easiest of all political positions. The constitution only authorizes the federal body to perform about 20 common functions for the states. Anything not on that list should be voted against and per the 10th Amendment, left to the states.
One of the eye opening experiences I’ve had in writing my legislators was several years ago I wrote one of our state senators and asked why he’d voted for a new welfare bill. His reply was that it was part of the “general welfare clause” in the constitution. What this term-length-challenged senator expressed is an unfortunate misconception that far too many politicians share. “General welfare” means non-specific. You either have specific welfare (one group) or general welfare (everyone). Redistribution of wealth is specific and thus unconstitutional. Paying welfare funds out of the federal monies whereby people in one state pay for those in another, is simply unconstitutional. The Founding Fathers set up the country so that each state was sovereign and not to be relied on for other state’s state-level issues. If a state wants a welfare program, it’s their business, not the federal government’s.
