MSM: Judge Napolitano – Health-Care Reform and the Constitution
September 16th, 2009
(WSJ) – Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.” Then he shot back: “How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?”
Andrew P. Napolitano
The Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2009
Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress’s powers only to those granted in the Constitution.
One of those powers—the power “to regulate” interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.
Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.
James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept “regular.”
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September 16th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution: “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;”
Which part of this do you not comprehend? Don’t give me the typical – “it doesn’t authorize a nanny state” reply. Health care is not equal to a nanny state, and any rational person would conclude it falls under “general welfare”. Having diseased Americans walking about threatens the nations overall health and productivity.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
“General Welfare,” as it applies to the constitution, does not mean “personal welfare” or “welfare of the individual citizen.” It means the welfare of the United States as a nation.
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To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, “to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.” For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They 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. –Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791.
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D.T.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Democratic thinker,
If you can’t see how the health of the people directly affects the health of the nation (ie productivity) – well, then I’m talking to a brick wall…
September 17th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I am all for responsible reporting on the public airwaves! Those that use the airwaves to deliberately and repeatedly use fabrications that are not true, are dangerous to the public safety and to the constitution that is supposed to guarantee our rights of free speech. Americans have free speech rights, … but not the freedom to shout “FIRE!” when their is no fire, inside a crowded theatre!
The irresponsable reporting by the likes of “Glenn Beck” creates a “mob” mentality! A mob mentality that can and will (according to history) incite to violence, those that are portrayed as different from that of the mob!
Let’s face it! There are those in america that are looking forward to inciting a “RACE WAR,” and are using the public air waves and the fact of a black president to incite mobs to act violently against the government of the USA!
You have to be blind to not recognize the conservative movement direction toward insurection of a pluralistic and multi-cultural america and instituting in it’s place what existed in our racist fundamentalist bigoted past!
All of this backward movement toward our unenlightened past is being done in the name of fighting “COMMUNISM!
http://despicable.wordpress.com/