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By
Larry Elder
CNSNews.com Commentary
July 05, 2001
The modern welfare state: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
farm subsidies, and other so-called assistance programs for
the needy, the downtrodden, and the sick -- funded through
taxation.
But did the Founding Fathers intend for a government-provided
social safety net? The evidence clearly says no. The
often-misunderstood general welfare clause simply outlines
specific responsibilities and powers of the federal
government, leaving all others to the states and to the
people. James Madison, the principle author of the
Constitution, said, "With respect to the words general
welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the
details of powers (enumerated in the Constitution) 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 proof was not contemplated by its
creators."
For the first 150 years of our nation's history, the Supreme
Court saw the Constitution the way Madison wrote, explained,
and intended it.
What happened? Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While certainly
America's greatest twentieth-century president, FDR
nevertheless deserves the title of principle architect of the
modern welfare state.
Angered by Supreme Court decisions striking down major parts
of his New Deal legislation, FDR fought back, proposing a law
to add more justices to the Supreme Court. He threatened to
pack the court with justices who deemed the Constitution a
"living, breathing document," versus the
"strict constructionist" outlook by the anti-New
Deal justices, who determined an activist, benevolent
government as unconstitutional.
Even FDR's legal advisor, Felix Frankfurter, whom FDR later
appointed to the Supreme Court, advised FDR against his
court-packing scheme. In the well-received biography
"Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny,"
author Frank Freidel discusses the profound shift in
constitutional interpretation that occurred during the
dramatic years of the Roosevelt administration.
"Frankfurter," wrote Freidel, "had hastened to
Washington and had advised (FDR) to bide his time before
clashing with the Supreme Court: Let more adverse decisions
accumulate and then propose a constitutional amendment.
Roosevelt ignored the advice and set forth upon his own course
of action."
In short, despite a depression and 25 percent unemployment,
the Constitution, under the vision of limited government
established by the Framers, did not permit this kind of income
redistribution, no matter how popular or desirable. If you
want to pull this off, advised Frankfurter, change the
Constitution. "From Roosevelt's standpoint," wrote
Freidel, "the emotion was not pique but outrage. His
target was not the Constitution but rather the outmoded
Supreme Court interpretation of it." |
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