Govt Health Care: Another Ignorant Senator

By Bob Ellis on December 16th, 2009

j0400180 Ignorance reigns supreme in congress.

Well, I suppose if I’m going to be accurate, I have to say there is a co-regency between ignorance and arrogance because many of our leaders in Washington feel entitled to ignore the U.S. Constitution and just make up stuff they feel we the little people need to have forced on us.

I’m talking about the government health care plan President Barack Obama and the socialist-controlled congress are hell-bent on forcing on the American people, and the yeoman’s work CNS News is doing of exposing the astonishing ignorance and arrogance of our so-called “representatives.”

The latest from CNS News on Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR):

At a press conference on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Blanche Lincoln the following question: “What part of the Constitution do you think gives Congress the authority to mandate that individuals have to purchase health insurance?”
Lincoln did not answer the question during the press conference but spoke to CNSNews.com in the Dirkson Senate Office Building immediately afterward. CNSNews.com asked her there: ‘You didn’t respond to my constitutionality question during the press conference, and what was your reaction to, your answer to the question?”
“Well, I just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people,” Lincoln said.
CNSNews.com then asked the Senator: “So, what area though? You’re saying the health and well-being. What area, though, does that fall under?”
“The health and well-being of the people of the country,” she replied.

Am I the only person who hears/reads this and feels patronized, treated like a dunce, viewed as an incapable moron who can’t see to my own needs? I don’t think so; in fact, I can imagine Patrick Henry getting ginned up for a fresh “Give me liberty…” speech if he’d heard this elitist nonsense.

In reality, it is not the American people who are dunces, but these so-called “representatives.”

For those who attended the same American Government classes as Lincoln, Landrieu, Nelson, Akaka, Pelosi and Hoyer, Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution enumerates the things over which congress has jurisdiction; if it’s not listed, congress has no power in that area.

This reality of our limited form of government is further clarified by the Tenth Amendment which says

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 should be more than sufficient to make it abundantly clear that congress has no authority to create a government health care system (it isn’t authorized by Article 1 Section 8), but for the truly obtuse among us, many statements made by the founders about our limited form of government, and about the charitable intent of government meddlers, make it crystal clear:

[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights. – Thomas Jefferson
Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. – Thomas Jefferson
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense. – James Madison
[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution. – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81, 1788
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

It is painfully obvious that the majority of our elected “representatives” are too ignorant of the document they are sworn to support to be able to do their jobs adequately and to protect the liberties of the Americans they represent. It therefore falls to we the people to hold them accountable right now with our calls and emails.

And if they fail to learn what it takes to uphold their oath and perform their job as representative correctly, it is the duty of we the people to remove them from office in 2010 and 2012 and replace them with men and women who will keep their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution–and our freedoms.

Dems ready to push health bill despite setbacks (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Rasmussen: ObamaCare support plunges to new low (hotair.com)
Obama: Senate Will Pass Health Bill by Christmas (cbsnews.com)
Base Closure Threat Blackmailing Senator Nelson into Health Care Vote? (dakotavoice.com)

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