The General Welfare clause

In Federalist Paper No.41, James Madison responds to critics who claim the "general welfare" clause amounts to an unbridled power to tax and spend. He says:

• 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.

Clearly, as he points out, the "general welfare" clause could be abused in two separate ways, both would be tremendously damaging to our republic.

First, politicians could use this clause to levy taxes upon the States in order to pay for federal projects and initiatives not explicitly granted the federal government in the Constitution. Later in 1817, when James Madison was President, he vetoed just such a bill, called the "Federal Public Works Bill".

Second, politicians could overrule certain rights of the people by declaring that a certain piece legislation was designed to promote the welfare of the country. For example, as Madison says, promoting the general welfare might be construed to mean suppression of certain expressions of speech. Ought then the federal government have to power to tax in order to suppress speech, so long as the government justified the tax as promoting the general welfare?

The truth is that the "general welfare" clause meant then what it means now. It means the federal government has the power to establish agencies and offices by which it carries out the direct responsibilities granted it elsewhere in the Constitution. In other words, the "general welfare" clause has no meaning independent of another clause elsewhere in the Constitution.