(Steny Hoyer and Dems) Shred The Constitution

Investor's Business Daily ^ | October, 23, 2009 | IBD Editorial Staff

[raptor22]

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare."

Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute. (snip) We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action," the Congressional Budget Office concluded. "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."

Nor can it, according to constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin. "Congressman Hoyer is wrong," he said. "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."

[Dick Bachert]

And before I’m accused of simply flogging the problem, the solution is to RE-ELECT ONLY those who pass Constitutional muster. Before you say “My guy’s doing a SWELL job,” check him out at http://www.gradegov.com/

[LeonardFMason]

At one time Steny Hoyer had some balls. He has obviously been castrated by Pelosi.

[Windflier]

Liberals have been using the General Welfare clause of the Constitution to justify their Socialist social engineering for a lifetime.

I’m no constitutional expert, but the General Welfare clause is in the Preamble to the Constitution - not the Constitution itself. It’s my opinion, that the Preamble is simply a statement of purpose - not a part of the foundational text, or law spelled out in the Articles and Amendments.

If this point could ever be settled by the Supreme Court, it would overturn the entire welfare/entitlement establishment.

[darkangel82]

My rep got a B+.

[ExTexasRedhead]

Hey Congressional traitors, you forgot one minor detail:

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/capitol-view-lo-res.jpg

We The People will remember you in 2010. Count on it; that’s a vow. Pelosi will be Speaker of the Toilet Bowl where she belongs.

[Secret Agent Man]

For the whole series of Zero dollar bills, go here:

"Flickr Archive of Zero Bills"

[chris37]

Hey, Steny, I ain’t gonna buy s**t, and I don’t care what you say, or what you do. Screw you.

[El Gato]

the federal government can do anything."

Which is what most of Congress, and most administrations too, obviously think.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[El Gato]

If this point could ever be settled by the Supreme Court, it would overturn the entire welfare/entitlement establishment.

I think it has been, but I could be wrong. It's a just refuge of the left when trying to justify their latest Constitutional violation. When they go to court, they usually fall back on the Interstate Commerce Clause.

[sourcery]

"The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."

So the socialists believe. Or more correctly, so they want the average voter to believe.

[DTogo]

Bulk ammunition is hard to come by for a reason...

[haroldeveryman]

“the federal government can do anything.”

That is an elegant summation of the political philosophy of the post 60’s Democratic Party.

[Smber]

“Liberals have been using the General Welfare clause of the Constitution to justify their Socialist social engineering for a lifetime.”

Blame Alexander Hamilton. It started in the late 18th century.

[Jacquerie]

Actually there is reference to it in Article I Section 8: ". . . provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States . . ."

Helvering v. Davis - 1937. Social Security was challenged and found Constitutional in large part based on the General Welfare clause, rejecting Madison and adopting Hamilton.

Writing for the 7-2 majority, Justice Cardozo held that Congress was given the power to spend money for the public good under the General Welfare Clause. Hence, the Social Security Act did not violate the 10th Amendment. The Court would defer to Congress in determining what legislative acts served the general welfare. Congress itself would be the monitor of what Congress would do.

The four Marxists and one jellyfish on Scotus will not overturn obummercare. We're screwed.

[St. Louis Conservative]

By this reasoning, what exactly isn’t allowed by the so-called “general welfare” clause??

[Girlene]

Steny Hoyer also believes the "General Welfare" clause gives him and his buds the power to do this:

............."He added that Congress has “broad authority” to force Americans to purchase other things as well, so long as it was trying to promote “the general welfare.” "................
Hoyer Says Constitution’s ‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance

[MrB]

Here's some founders' comments on "General Welfare":

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.

Madison, Federalist 41, on the "general welfare" in I.8
"For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter."

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
-- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
--Thomas Jefferson "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."
James Madison, "Letter to Edmund Pendleton,"
-- James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed
(Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

[Marty62]

repost:

UHHHH Stupid Hoyer...
‘LIFE,LIBERTY AND THE PERSUIT OF HAPPINESS” TRUMPS.

Life:
noun 1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

Liberty:
–noun, plural -ties. 1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
5. permission granted to a sailor, esp. in the navy, to go ashore.
6. freedom or right to frequent or use a place: The visitors were given the liberty of the city.
7. unwarranted or impertinent freedom in action or speech, or a form or instance of it: to take liberties.
8. a female figure personifying freedom from despotism.

—Idiom9. at liberty, a. free from captivity or restraint.
b. unemployed; out of work.
c. free to do or be as specified: You are at liberty to leave at any time during the meeting.

Pursuit of Happiness:
Meaning:

The right to try to find happiness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms (”right to the pursuit of happiness” is a kind of...):

human right ((law) any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere (including rights to life and liberty as well as freedom of thought and expression and equality before the law))