As established by the Founders, Congress has the enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” This provides a clear constitutional basis for restricting or banning triclosan from consumer products.
I prefer the more restricted federal government that the founders tried to give us.
You may want more of a nanny state.
/johnny
The commerce clause argument is an interesting one. I suppose the Constitution DOES give the Congress the power to ban soap that is sold between states.
Thing is, this “ruling” isn’t from Congress, it is from an executive branch agency.
While we are quoting the Constitution, let’s start with the very first words after the preamble:
“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
The first word in that paragraph says it “all”, no pun intended. Rulings by bureaucracies and judges carry the force of legislation. But the Constitution says, plainly, that ALL legislative powers belong to Congress.
We have gotten away from making certain that our laws are made by Congress, enforced by the executive branch, and protected by the judiciary. Whatever the founders envisioned, it WASN’T a bureaucracy (even one created by Congress) that can make LAW.
LOL! Try again!
§ 1075....... The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments. When duties are laid, not for purposes of revenue, but of retaliation and restriction, to countervail foreign restrictions, they are strictly within the scope of the power, as a regulation of commerce. But when laid to encourage manufactures, they have nothing to do with it. The power to regulate manufactures is no more confided to congress, than the power to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws of the states. It is notorious, that, in the convention, an attempt was made to introduce into the constitution a power to encourage manufactures; but it was withheld. Instead of granting the power to congress, permission was given to the states to impose duties, with the consent of that body, to encourage their own manufactures; and thus, in the true spirit of justice, imposing the burthen on those, who were to be benefited.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution