Pelosi v. Madison on the powers of Congress under the Constitution
On Wednesday we editorialized about the cavalier attitude of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi toward that inconvenient and therefore insignificant and unimportant document known as the U.S. Constitution.
She and others were asked by CNSNews.com where the Constitution authorizes Congress to force Americans, under penalty of law, to buy insurance.
Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska shrugged off the question by saying he was not a constitutional scholar. Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka said he was “not aware” the Constitution authorizes that. Rhode Island’s Democratic Sen. Jack Reed suggested it was like making people “sign up for the draft.”
But Nancy Pelosi was simply incredulous.
When asked the question, she replied, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” and turned to another reporter, ignoring the question. Her spokesman later said, “You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.” Apparently you raise your level of authority by repeating the answer.
No one seems to have actually read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which enumerates the powers of Congress — collect taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, establish post offices, establish copyright and patent laws, set up courts, declare war, maintain an army and navy, and make laws necessary and proper to carry out those specific powers.
On March 3, 1817, President James Madison vetoed a bill that would have funded construction of roads and canals “to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense." Sounds like the rationale used by Eisenhower to building the Interstate highway system, right?
Madison, left, wrote:
“The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
“‘The power to regulate commerce among the several States’ can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
“To refer the power in question to the clause ‘to provide for common defense and general welfare’ would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms ‘common defense and general welfare’ embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.”
Now, who are you going to trust to interpret the Constitution? People who’ve not read it, or the person who wrote it?
