Constitutional Authority for Govt Health Care: Elected Reps Have No Answer
Lately CNS News has been doing a very important job, the job the “mainstream” media just can’t seem to bring itself to do: confronting lawmakers on the constitutionality of the laws they create.
A few weeks ago, CNS News asked House Majority Leader (someone in a high leadership position where Constitutional knowledge should be paramount) Steny Hoyer (D-MD) where in the Constitution exists the authority for a government health care system. He was, needless to day, lost when it came to answering this question. He was lost because there is no answer–the Constitution does not provide authority to the federal government for a government health care system.
A few days later, CNS News asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (a leadership position where understanding of and adherence to the Constitution are even more important) the same question, and received essentially the same non-answer. In fact, she seemed highly offended to even be asked (or angry at having been caught in this unconstitutional cookie-grab).
A couple of days ago, CNS News continued this campaign of constitutional accountability by asking Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) where congress gets the constitutional authority to govern the nation’s health care system:
“Specifically, where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance?” CNSNews.com asked Nelson.
“Well, you know, I don’t know that I’m a constitutional scholar,” said Nelson. So, I, I’m not going to be able to answer that question.”
The senator then turned away to answer another reporter’s question.
Excuse me, but shouldn’t an elected official who swore an oath to the Constitution and who’s only job is to craft laws that comply with the Constitution have a pretty good clue where the constitutional authority for a particular bill comes from? People who serve in our government have no higher duty than to ensure that everything they do conforms to the U.S. Constitution–there is no higher law in our land.
You don’t have to be a “constitutional authority” to glean whether the Constitution provide authority for this. All you have to do is read the darn thing and know just the basic doctrines of our system of government. Also required, of course, is the willingness to abide by the Constitution. In addition to a dearth of knowledge, this willingness is the key ingredient missing from most of our elected representatives.
CNS News also talked to Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) who was a little more honest than many of his socialist colleagues:
When CNSNews.com asked whether the Constitution gives Congress the authority to make Americans buy health insurance, Sen. Akaka said: “I’m not aware of that, let me put it that way. But what we’re trying to do is to provide for people who have needs and that’s where the accessibility comes in, and one of the goals that we’re trying to present here is to make it accessible.”
When asked if there was a specific part of the Constitutoin that gives Congress the authority to make people buy health insurance, Akaka said: “Not in particular with health insurance. It’s not covered in that respect. But in ways to help citizens in our country to live a good life, let me say it that way, is what we’re trying to do, and in this case, we’re trying to help them with their health.”
In other words, Akaka is saying, “I’m not aware of any constitutional authority for government intervention in health care, but the Constitution really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have a good-sounding reason to do whatever we want. My oath to the Constitution? Just words, nothing more.”
So where exactly does the federal government get its authority to do things in our system of limited government? Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution outlines just what the federal government is empowered to do; our federal government can do these things–and nothing more.
James Madison, also known as the “Father of the Constitution,” tells us in the Federalist #45
The powers delegated by the Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.
If you examine Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution, no where in there will you find authority for the federal government to create or regulate a health care system, nor will common sense tell you that a nation’s health care system is anything remotely resembling an “external object.”
Additionally, the Tenth Amendment makes it abundantly clear that anything not clearly delegated to the federal government to do is reserved to the states and the people to deal with:
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.
If it still isn’t clear enough that this government meddling in the health care system is unconstitutional and illegal, consider the additional light the founders–who set up our government and knew best how it it was supposed to operate–shed on this subject:
The Constitution says, “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, &c., provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States”. I suppose the meaning of this clause to be, that Congress may collect taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare, in those cases wherein the Constitution empowers them to act for the general welfare. To suppose that it was meant to give them a distinct substantive power, to do any act which might tend to the general welfare, is to render all the enumerations useless, and to make their powers unlimited. – Thomas Jefferson
Our tenet ever was…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 that 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. – Thomas Jefferson
They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please…Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect. – Thomas Jefferson
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. – Thomas Jefferson
[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” – James Madison
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
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.” – James Madison
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. – James Madison
We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government. – James Jackson, First Congress
A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet’ and `Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free. – John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions 1787
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
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. – James Madison
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. … Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America. – James Madison
We are not allowed to just make stuff up as we go. We are not allowed to just do whatever notion strikes us or whatever whim catches our attention–not if we claim to still give a rip about our own Constitution…not if we want to remain a free people.
The founders set up a limited government because they knew first hand the dangers and threats to liberty presented by a government with too much power.
What could be more dangerous to freedom, what could be more at odds with our limited Constitutional government, than a system that asserts the right to make health care–life and death–decisions about the very personhood of each and every American?
Ever patriotic American should be livid over this unconstitutional, anti-American power grab and assault on our freedom. And then, every good American should loudly and strongly and unwaveringly demand that our elected officials obey the Constitution–or get out of our government.
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