Wrong.
The commerce clause became the carte blanche for social legislation through a series of cases upholding New Deal legislation in the 1930s and 1940s. In those cases the Supreme Court interpreted the clause as permitting Congress not just to regulate commerce (actual interstate trade in goods and services), but also to regulate anything that had a “substantial effect” on commerce. The watershed case which held that Congress could regulate purely private, individual, and noncommercial conduct was Wickard v. Filburn (1942).
In its simplest terms, Wickard held that Congress had authority under the interstate commerce clause to prohibit Filburn, the owner of a small farm, from growing, storing, and consuming his very own wheat on his very own property. For this reason, it is often selected by libertarians (and occasionally conservatives) as a patent illustration not only of the Supreme Court’s egregious failure to uphold the Constitution, but also of the now nearly unlimited scope of congressional power.
Yet a close reading of the case redirects attention away from the Supreme Court as the villain responsible for the loss of limited government, and reveals more precisely the reason for that loss. More troubling still, a close analysis of Wickard indicates why term limits, balanced budgets, prohibitions on unfunded mandates, or similar institutional devices will not re-establish limited government, and points to the daunting nature and magnitude of the reform necessary to limit government power.
How the Commerce Clause Became the Loophole that Eviscerated the Tenth Amendment
I DARE them to try this....