“General Welfare Clause
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1
There are several phrases in the Constitution that are regularly misrepresented. One of the most common is Congress’s power to provide for the “general welfare” of the United States. So let’s break down that phrase so we can understand it.
GEN’ERAL: Public; common; relating to or comprehending the whole community; as the general interest or safety of a nation.
WELFARE: Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applied to states.
Websters 1828 Dictionary
So, general welfare, when applied to the states, means the exemption from unusual evil or calamity and the enjoyment of peace, prosperity, and blessings of society for the community as a whole. The next logical question should be, “What community?”
Notice the Constitution does not say the general welfare of the people of the United States, nor the general welfare of the States, but of the United States. Today, when we think of the United States, we usually think of a nation broken into 50 subdivisions we call states, but when the Constitution was ratified, we had 13 independent states who joined together and delegated some of their powers to a central government called the United States. This distinction may seem trivial, but it is actually quite important. If the United States is a single government subdivided into smaller units we call states, then Washington rules and your states are really colonies of Washington, not much different than their condition in 1776 under British rule. If, however, we are 50 sovereign states who have delegated some of their power to the union, and if the term United States refers to the union and its central government, then the meaning of the phrase, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States” means something different. It means that Congress can collect taxes to pay the debts of the federal government, not those of the states. It means Congress can collect taxes to pay for the defense of the nation as a whole, not the defense of individual states. And most importantly, it means Congress can collect taxes to pay for the general welfare of the United States, not the people or the individual states..
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; Article I, Section…
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