At least once it got turbo-charged by the 16th amendment.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
There was considerable debate over the meaning of "general welfare" even during the period when the original states were deciding whether or not to ratify the Constitution. However, it most certainly did not mean what "welfare" means in our time. Rather, it meant "well-being," as in prosperity — primarily issues like uniform interstate laws governing commerce, protection against riots and insurrections, protection of shipping, and related matters.
By the way, few people today who aren't historians are aware of just how close the Constitution came to failing to be ratified. It carried in Massachusetts by only 19 votes (187-168), and then only with assurances that a Bill of Rights would be added. It passed in New Hampshire and Virgina by only 10 votes, and in New York by the razor-thin margin of 3 votes. North Carolina did not ratify it until the Bill of Rights was created more than a year after New York ratified. And Rhode Island, which held so strongly to its independence that it didn't even send delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, finally ratified in 1790. Ratification in Rhode Island carried by only 2 votes.
Men who opposed the Constitution included prominent figures of the Revolutionary period, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Among them were: Patrick Henry (of 'Give me liberty or give me death' fame); Thomas Paine (author of 'Common Sense' the best rationale for independence ever written); George Clinton (a brigadier general during the Revolutionary War, 7 times governor of New York, and eventually 3rd VP of the US); George Mason (among the greatest, if less well known of our founders; who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was the model for the Declaration of Independence and the basis for the Bill of Rights; he was one of the most influential members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention). The opposed the Constitution because they did not want to see the states weakened and subjugated to a strong central government — a concern that still flows through many American veins to this day.