Jefferson, Madison and others have said that the General Welfare mentioned in Clause 1 of Section 8, along with common defense were spending categories that were limited in scope by the remainder of Section 8. Pardon me if I take their word over that of a court more than 100 years later. How can you really trust a court that expands its own powers every time they expand the scope of government.
Jefferson played virtually no role in the writing of the constitution. He wasn't even in the country. Worse, he was an anti-federalist...the faction that lost in the debate on what the consittution was supposed to mean.
Madison is a much better source, being a Federalist Paper author. Feel free to quote him backing your point. Directly.
Hamilton, one of the writers of the Federalist Papers and one of the leading proponents of implied powers and federalism in general overwhelmingly supported the idea of implied powers which go beyond the scope of express powers.
A position he backed with actual policy, becoming a fierce and vocal advocate for the Bank of the United States.
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. James Madison Federalist 45
the true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best . . . (for) when all government . . . shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as . . . oppressive as the government from which we separated."
--Thomas Jefferson
"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
You might say Madison was a prophet.
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/James.Madison.Quote.3254
You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both houses,
was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that
the phrase in the constitution, which authorizes Congress 'to lay taxes, to pay the
debts and provide for the general welfare,' was an extension of the powers
specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you
know, was the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost
the only land-mark which now divides the federalists* from the republicans, 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 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
http://illinoisconservative.com/Jefferson/TJ-06-16-1817.html