Quote:
Originally Posted by mookiemookie
Improving and fixing the welfare system is a great goal. This is not the way to do it, however. It's childish and simplistic thinking that wastes taxpayer dollars.
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Actually the Founding Fathers believed that Federal welfare was unconstitutional.
James Madison even believed that Federally funded schools were a subversion of what the U.S. Government was meant to do.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2903629/posts
"The Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed" - Thomas Jefferson, 1791
Jefferson was arguing against the constitutionality of Alexander Hamilton's proposal for a National Bank, but his thoughts on other areas of Federal dabbling are obvious.
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson, 1798
And some later presidents:
"[I must question] the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those … who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." - President Franklin Pierce, 1854
"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit." - President Grover Cleveland, 1887
"We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money." - Congressman David Crockett, 1830.
All the above quotes are from this article:
http://gopcapitalist.tripod.com/constitution.html
A short article by a man for whom I have the utmost respect:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/artic...detective.html
I believe that all public welfare and health care issues should be the provenance of the States, not the Federal Government.