Everything doesn't need to be mentioned in our Constitution for us to be able to allow the federal government to have a say in it.
Education is a big one, especially to someone like me. My family is military. We move around, as do many of my neighbors. My son just started Kindergarten last month. Since then, at least one boy has moved and another student has moved in. Me and the two other moms I have become friends with in this last month all know that we will be moving somewhere else before the end of the school year. This means that wherever our children go to school, it would be great if they could not be behind just because their fathers' service obligations take them all over the country. This means that schools need to have a plan to stay with each other, ensuring students entering the schools are not at a disadvantage just because they come to a new school.
This is the United States. It is a single country, which means the most important things should be at least the same throughout the country, because otherwise people get screwed. We simply are not the same country we started as.
first i am speaking of the federal government only......
sorry but you are incorrect, only powers delegated to congress can they engage in, our government was meant to be limited.
the u.s, is a
union of states ,it does not have a national government ...its federal, it practices federalism......we are not like France.
“With respect to the two 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 letter to James Robertson
“[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is
limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” – James Madison, Federalist 14
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are
few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.” – James Madison, Federalist 45
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” – James Madison, 1792
“The Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed” – Thomas Jefferson, 1791
“
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1798
There you have it. James Madison, the Constitution’s author and Thomas Jefferson the author of the Declaration of Independence, specifically say that
Congressional powers are to be limited and defined – unlike most modern interpretations!
Admittedly, Jefferson and Madison were not our only Founders. These two were strict constitutionalists who feared the potential strength of any government. So let’s look at another Founder’s opinion—Alexander Hamilton who historically saw it in a somewhat looser vain.
“This specification of particulars [the 18 enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8] evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 83
Hamilton uncategorically states that all congressional powers are enumerated and that the very existence of these enumerations alone makes any belief that Congress has full and general legislative power to act as it desires nonsensical. If such broad congressional power had been the original intent, the constitutionally specified powers would have been worthless. In other words, why even enumerate any powers at all if the General Welfare clause could trump them?
“No legislative act … contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 78
In short, Hamilton tells us that since the powers of Congress are enumerated and limit Congress to those powers, any assumed authority outside those specified that don’t have a direct relation to those explicit powers must be contrary to the Constitution and therefore — unconstitutional.