Posted on 10/21/2009 7:56:56 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Hoyer Says Constitution’s ‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance Wednesday, October 21, 2009 By Matt Cover
(CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the individual health insurance mandates included in every health reform bill, which require Americans to have insurance, were “like paying taxes.” He added that Congress has “broad authority” to force Americans to purchase other things as well, so long as it was trying to promote “the general welfare.”
The Congressional Budget Office, however, has stated in the past that a mandate forcing Americans to buy health insurance would be an “unprecedented form of federal action,” and that the “government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
Hoyer, speaking to reporters at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, was asked by CNSNews.com where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to mandate that a person must by a health insurance policy. Hoyer said that, in providing for the general welfare, Congress had “broad authority.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Well that should make for an interesting Supreme Court decision somewhere down the road.
WWWLD?
Steny Hoyer is a threat to my General Welfare.
UHHHH Stupid Hoyer...
‘LIFE,LIBERTY AND THE PERSUIT OF HAPPINESS” TRUMPS.
Life:
noun 1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
Liberty:
–noun, plural -ties. 1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
5. permission granted to a sailor, esp. in the navy, to go ashore.
6. freedom or right to frequent or use a place: The visitors were given the liberty of the city.
7. unwarranted or impertinent freedom in action or speech, or a form or instance of it: to take liberties.
8. a female figure personifying freedom from despotism.
—Idiom9. at liberty, a. free from captivity or restraint.
b. unemployed; out of work.
c. free to do or be as specified: You are at liberty to leave at any time during the meeting.
Pursuit of Happiness:
Meaning:
The right to try to find happiness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms (”right to the pursuit of happiness” is a kind of...):
human right ((law) any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere (including rights to life and liberty as well as freedom of thought and expression and equality before the law))
The original intent.
ML/NJ
* Federalist #41 (excerpt)
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the 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," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.
Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."
But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
In a word, YES!
Awesome! I guess that also means that the 2nd Amm would empower congress to order Americans to buy guns!
Yay!
.....We came unarmed... THIS TIME.
...........
There fixed it.
“Govt “health care” will enable the govt to eliminate the 2nd Amendment & ban guns since guns impact health care.”
Yep and they will also have the power to deny, or even outright ban, certain “medical procedures.” The left is unwittingly giving the right the power to ban abortion.
It is rather refreshing that they now want the government to pass laws taking direct control of our physical beings.....
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,..”
Mel Gibson’s character said something in the movie `The Patriot’ that comes to my mind: “Why exchange one dictator a thousand miles away for a thousand dictators one mile away?” (Or something like that)
Tyranny ping!
I guess Madison had it wrong.
This clause was meant by the framers to be a limitation on the power to tax and not a grant of more power to tax for any "good cause".Jefferson explained that this clause was not a grant of power to "spend" for the general welfare of the people, but was intended to "limit the power of taxation" to matters which provided for the welfare of "the Union" or the welfare of the whole nation. In other words, federal taxes could not be levied for states, counties, cities, or special interest groups.
My GGGG etc:
General Thomas Sumter:
In the last year of life, he took a stand on a principle of government closest to his heart - that principle then, and now, referred to as “States Rights.” It was then (1832) that Calhoun’s doctrine of The right of nullifications by a state, in the event its reserved powers had been transgressed upon by the Federal Government, was being insisted upon by South Carolina. That dispute was at its height when he died at the age of 98.
Ping
I’m wondering why Americans didn’t pick a date and do that already?
That’s what it’s going to take.
and also how about providing equal justice for all
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