Democrats’ Health Care Plan Will ‘Shred Constitution,’ Hoekstra Says

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) told CNSNews.com that the health care bill pushed by the Democratic House leadership will “shred the Constitution” and that Democrats have not given Republicans “any time to showcase” their ideas on health care reform.

When CNSNews.com asked, “Are you satisfied with what the GOP has proposed thus far to counter the Democrats’ plan on health care?” Hoekstra said, “Well, I mean there’s always arguments that could be made: ‘You’ve got to be out there with a more powerful message’ and those types of things, but you know, we’re out there with a message.”

“I think people know that we’ve [Republicans] got alternatives, but the important thing now is to point out that what this bill is going to do, it’s going to shred the Constitution,” Hoekstra said. “I’ve got one in here. I’ve got so many papers out of the crowd, but you know it’s going to shred the Constitution and take all of that freedom away from the American people.”

“I mean, the thing we need to do right now is just point out how ugly the Pelosi bill is,” Hoekstra told CNSNews.com at a Nov. 5 rally on Capitol Hill to protest the Democrats’ health care bill. “If we can stop that, then we can come back and have a constructive dialogue about the ideas that Republicans have had, and we’ve had them for a long time. They just haven’t given us any time to showcase them.”

Democrats such as Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) have said the “general welfare” language in the preamble of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to require that every American purchase health insurance, as mandated in the health care bill.

“This is about what’s going to work, and this is going to be about what decisions are going to be made by the American people and which ones are going to be made by government bureaucrats,” said Hoekstra. “They can come up with a legal justification for what they’re doing, but fundamentally this program is wrong.”

He continued: “I think there’s a lot of question about whether at a federal level we can make those kinds of mandates, and I’m sure that if they do pass that kind of a mandate that there will be many of us that will challenge that in the courts to get an official ruling and an official interpretation from the courts as to whether that’s legal or not.”

Democrats such as Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) have said the general welfare language in the preamble of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to require that every American purchase health insurance, as mandated in the health care bill.

Burriss and his fellow socialists are using the Constitution is a living breathing document thinking. The general welfare is mentioned only twice in the Constitution. The phrase appears once in the Preamble, but the Preamble gives the legislative branch no authority whatsoever. General welfare is also mentioned once in Article I, Section 8.

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.

Notice that the Constitution doesn't say the general welfare of the citizens of the United States. It says general Welfare of the United States. This clause only gives the Congress the power to raise money to defend the country and pay for the day-to-day operations of the government. It says nothing at all about building bridges to nowhere, or paving bike paths, or spending money on any other kind of pork barrel project, including health care.

These are Congress's only powers and are reinforced by the 9th and 10th Amendments. Below are the Amendments.

Here they are:

Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 10th Amendment clearly is referring to the federal government and therefore pertain only to those powers specifically and expressly written in Article 1 Section 8. So the phrase, in Article I, Section 8, general Welfare of the United States only applies to the inner workings of the federal government.

The words "health" or "health care" appear nowhere in the Constitution. Therefore any version of federal health care is unconstitutional and per the 10th Amendment, is a power regulated to the states.

The people are not bound by unconstitutional acts and should not acquiesce to any health care minutiae that comes from Congress.

Exquisite distrust

AIPNews.com

November 5, 2009

By Tom Hoefling

“It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.” – Psalm 118:8

It may shock some these days to know that our American form of republican government was founded in a belief that men are intrinsically wicked power-mongers, but it’s true. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Lord Acton famously said a century after our nation’s founding, but the men who framed the American republic already understood this truism well. This knowledge was rooted in their understanding of the Bible, of history, and of fallen human nature.

Which is why they set up a government of divided, enumerated powers.

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” -- Patrick Henry

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45

But, in the founding generation there were already those who, in the pursuit of their own power, had devoted themselves to the [mis]use of the very words of our Constitution against itself, destroying one of its primary purposes, which is the limitation of power.

The father of that great document, James Madison, was compelled in 1792, just a few short years after its adoption, to stand in the House of Representatives and rail against an unlimited construction on the words “general welfare.”

Mr. MADISON. It is supposed, by some gentlemen, that Congress have authority not only to grant bounties in the sense here used, merely as a commutation for drawback, but even to grant them under a power by virtue of which they may do any thing which they may think conducive to the general welfare! This, sir, in my mind, raises the important and fundamental question, whether the general terms which have been cited are to be considered as a sort of caption, or general description of the specified powers; and as having no further meaning, and giving no further powers, than what is found in that specification, or as an abstract and indefinite delegation of power extending to all cases whatever -- to all such, at least, as will admit the application of money -- which is giving as much latitude as any government could well desire.

I, sir, have always conceived -- I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived -- it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, that those who ratified the Constitution conceived -- that this is not an indefinite government, deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers -- but a limited government, tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.

It is to be recollected that the terms "common defence and general welfare," as here used, are not novel terms, first introduced into this Constitution. They are terms familiar in their construction, and well known to the people of America. They are repeatedly found in the old Articles of Confederation, where, although they are susceptible of as great a latitude as can be given them by the context here, it was never supposed or pretended that they conveyed any such power as is now assigned to them. On the contrary, it was always considered clear and certain that the old Congress was limited to the enumerated powers, and that the enumeration limited and explained the general terms. I ask the gentlemen themselves, whether it was ever supposed or suspected that the old Congress could give away the money of the states to bounties to encourage agriculture, or for any other purpose they pleased. If such a power had been possessed by that body, it would have been much less impotent, or have borne a very different character from that universally ascribed to it.

The novel idea now annexed to those terms, and never before entertained by the friends or enemies of the government, will have a further consequence, which cannot have been taken into the view of the gentlemen. Their construction would not only give Congress the complete legislative power I have stated, -- it would do more; it would supersede all the restrictions understood at present to lie, in their power with respect to a judiciary. It would put it in the power of Congress to establish courts throughout the United States, with cognizance of suits between citizen and citizen, and in all cases whatsoever.

This, sir, seems to be demonstrable; for if the clause in question really authorizes Congress to do whatever they think fit, provided it be for the general welfare, of which they are to judge, and money can be applied to it, Congress must have power to create and support a judiciary establishment, with a jurisdiction extending to all cases favorable, in their opinion, to the general welfare, in the same manner as they have power to pass laws, and apply money providing in any other way for the general welfare. I shall be reminded, perhaps, that, according to the terms of the Constitution, the judicial power is to extend to certain cases only, not to all cases. But this circumstance can have no effect in the argument, it being presupposed by the gentlemen, that the specification of certain objects does not limit the import of the general terms. Taking these terms as an abstract and indefinite grant of power, they comprise all the objectsof legislative regulations -- as well such as fall under the judiciary article in the Constitution as those falling immediately under the legislative article; and if the partial enumeration of objects in the legislative article does not, as these gentlemen contend, limit the general power, neither will it be limited by the partial enumeration of objects in the judiciary article.

There are consequences, sir, still more extensive, which, as they follow dearly from the doctrine combated, must either be admitted, or the doctrine must be given up. 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 a point 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 for 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; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.
The language held in various discussions of this house is a proof that the doctrine in question was never entertained by this body. Arguments, wherever the subject would permit, have constantly been drawn from the peculiar nature of this government, as limited to certain enumerated powers, instead of extending, like other governments, to all cases not particularly excepted. In a very late instance -- I mean the debate on the representation bill -- it must be remembered that an argument much used, particularly by gentlemen from Massachusetts, against the ratio of 1 for 30,000, was, that this government was unlike the state governments, which had an indefinite variety of objects within their power; that it had a small number of objects only to attend to; and therefore, that a smaller number of representatives would be sufficient to administer it.

Arguments have been advanced to show that because, in the regulation of trade, indirect and eventual encouragement is given to manufactures, therefore Congress have power to give money in direct bounties, or to grant it in any other way that would answer the same purpose. But surely, sir, there is a great and obvious difference, which it cannot be necessary to enlarge upon. A duty laid on imported implements of husbandry would, in its operation, be an indirect tax on exported produce; but will any one say that, by virtue of a mere power to lay duties on imports, Congress might go directly to the produce or implements of agriculture, or to the articles exported? It is true, duties on exports are expressly prohibited; but if there were no article forbidding them, a power directly to tax exports could never be deduced from a power to tax imports, although such a power might indirectly and incidentally affect exports.

In short, sir, without going farther into the subject. Which I should not have here touched at all but for the reasons already mentioned, I venture to declare it as my opinion, that, 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; and what inferences might be drawn, or what consequences ensue, from such a step, it is incumbent on us all to consider.

How far have succeeding generations, and this generation in particular, departed from the core principles of America’s founding? So far that our corrupt oath-breaking politicians scoff at any who dare raise a mere question that might suggest any limitation on the scope of their personal power. Madison, along with the entire founding generation, would be appalled. We now have a lawless government that totally ignores the clear purposes of our Constitution and seeks to control every single aspect of our lives.

Perhaps if “We the People” could find the will and the strength to force our politicians back within their proper jurisdiction, these "public servants" could then find the time to do their real job, which according to the cornerstone of the organic law of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, is to secure the God-given and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all.

Perhaps they could then find a way to fulfill their duty, sworn before God, to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution, which states as its ultimate purpose: “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers 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 proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

-- James Madison

"In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Tom Hoefling is the chairman and founder of America's Independent Party . You can read the AIP Platform and Personal Affiliation Agreement at www.AIPNews.com.

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