The Founders and General Welfare

Lawrence attorney William Skepnek, who also taught Honors Western Civilization at the University of Kansas from 1991 to 2010, took to the op-ed page of the Lawrence Journal-World today to "inform" readers about the Founders' views about the government helping people.

According to Skepnek, "From what some politicians are saying you’d think the makers of our nation were a bunch of bare-knuckled libertarians. A nation of hardy individuals and the Founding Fathers, this narrative goes, thought government an evil — the politicians say — because Americans don’t want help and feel no particular obligation to give it to others."

Where would politicians get the idea that the Founders believed government is evil? Maybe from reading The Federalist Papers. Or perhaps from reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense. "Society in every state is a blessing," Paine wrote, "but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."

Skepnek then goes on to discuss "general welfare." "Article 8, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to provide for 'the general Welfare of the United States,'” he wrote.

Given that the U.S. Constitution has just seven articles, it's obvious that neither Skepnek nor the editor caught the "Article 8" error. Skepnek meant Article I, Section 8. However, he deserves credit for referring to Article I, Section 8, which uses the verb "provide," instead of the Preamble, which uses the verb "promote" regarding the general welfare. "Provide" goes further than "promote."

However, Skepnek misinterprets the meaning of "general welfare." That term does not refer to programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and education (the word "education" does not appear in the Constitution). 

Webster’s Dictionary in 1828 offered two definitions for the word “welfare”:

1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons. 2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applied to states.

The words of the Founders make it clear that, by “welfare,” they meant the second definition, i.e., “applied to states.” By “general,” they meant “national.” According to Article III of the Articles of Confederation (1777), “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.” 

Note the similarities between the words used in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and Article III of the Articles of Confederation. In fact, in a January 21, 1792 letter to Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, noted that the general welfare clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was copied from Article III of the Articles of Confederation. In that same letter, Madison wrote, “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.”

The enumerated powers of Congress are listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Note that nothing resembling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, public education, farm subsidies, No Child Left Behind, or Obamacare can be found amongst those powers. There is also nothing in there about the federal government spending money on roads (with the exclusion of “post roads”) and bridges. In fact, the Constitutional Convention rejected an explicit attempt to authorize spending by the federal government for internal improvements.

As president, Madison vetoed a bill that authorized funding “for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses.” In a June 16, 1817 letter to Albert Gallatin, former President Thomas Jefferson expressed his support for Madison’s veto:

You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both Houses, was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the Constitution which authorizes Congress “to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,” was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you know, was the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident.

Would a strict and proper interpretation of the general welfare clause mean that no government can spend taxpayers’ dollars on bridges, roads, education, and social welfare programs? No. According to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This means that a state such as Massachusetts could enact Romneycare, on which socialists claim Obamacare was based, while other states would be free to go in other directions. As U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932, “A single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel and social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."