Roland Burris, the Dhimmicrappic Senator from Illinois who apparently got his ConLaw knowledge from the same poisoned Marxist faux Crackerjack box as The 0! said this about the ObUmascare push to nationalize health insurance,
(CNSNews.com) – When asked by CNSNews.com what specific part of the Constitution authorizes Congress to mandate that individuals must purchase health insurance, Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) pointed to the part of the Constitution that he says authorizes the federal government “to provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” In fact, the word “health” appears nowhere in the Constitution.
Now, most congresscritters simply assert that the “general welfare” clause found in the preamble justifies any old thing congrescritters want to do, but of course the “Father of the Constitution” demurs:
“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
And so there you have it: almost all congresscritters have violated their oaths of office to,
” …support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same… “
And they excuse their treason with such asshattery as Roland Burris’ stupid, illiterate comment. *feh* The House should impeach both themselves and the Senate, and the Senate should vote to convict. Sure, maybe a honest congresscritter that has attempted to be true to his oath of office would be caught in the gears, but that’d be a small price to pay. Of course, I expect reports of sub-zero temps in the most innner circles of hell (reserved of course for oath-breakers like congresscritters) before I hear reports of any such honest, forthright and ethical behavior from Congress.
People keep pointing to the Preamble as the place where the general welfare clause is found. Yes, you will find those words there as in “promote the General Welfare”, but you will also find it in the very first enumerated power in article 1 section 8, where it is actually qualified by the words “of the United States”.
Of course, if you look at how the term “the United States” is used elsewhere in the Constitution you’ll see that this power doesn’t authorize things like health care, social security or the like… the term is used as a plural and refers to the states and the union between them.
The most obvious place where this is made clear is in the definition of treason in article 3…
Hamilton’s words give similar support to the founders’ intent, but these days, when politicians argue over such trivial things as the meaning of the word “is” it isn’t a surprise to me that Congressmen expand on this clause so much.
Worse yet, the oligarchy that runs this country on the precepts of common rather than statutory law would probably agree with them.
Of course, Perri, but because poiliticians rarely read beyond the preamble, that’s where they issue their citation, more often than not. Burris did a little better than most, in that he mentioned defense, but I still don’t think he’s read beyond the preamble–if that.
Of course, if any of them do read through to I:8, they have to place blinders on, since, “all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States” isn’t really consonant with our current system of income and payroll taxation, if one were ever to stop and actually think about it, except by a really torturous twisting of reason. As but one example, in what way is a progressive income tax “uniform”? Sure, it’s applied across the board, but it UNuniformly taxes individuals.
Sadly, this sort of thing was ignored as early as Washington’s term in office, when an UNequal whiskey tax was implemented (that strangely favored large whiskey producers such as Washington himself–6 cents per gallon for bulk producers but 9 cents per gallon for small producers who were essentially just producing whiskey for more efficient shipping and sale of their grain products from remote areas) that resulted in the Whiskey Rebellion, which was brutally suppressed by executive order initiating martial law.
The exact same sort of act by the Federal government condemned in the Declaration of Independence as illegitimate governance and forbidden by the Constitution was protested in the way Americans had been taught by years of protest against such behavior by the British as being legitimate. Ann Washington–whose own distillery business profited by the disparity in taxation, ordered the protests suppressed.
Yes, there were “greater issues” of Federal authority and debt from the war that still persisted, but early on in our history, American politicians demonstrated a remarkable ability to turn a blind eye to the principles they themselves had laid down as “etched in stone” as it were.
I’ll let the two of you speak for me on this issue; why interfere when both of you have it right. Congress should be dismissed on the grounds they have violated their oaths of office, maybe tar and feathered for effect as a warning to others.