[lit-ideas] Re: Federal Role in Katrina Restoration: Is It Permissible?
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:54:49 -0400
Except we're not talking about benevolence. We're talking about losing cities
vital to national interest. Here's a question for you: do objects of
benevolence include corporations taking federal money with impunity, such as
bailout from bankruptcy? What were the Constitutional arguments during
Reconstruction following the Civil War?
----- Original Message -----
From: M.A. Camp
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 9/22/2005 3:44:07 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Federal Role in Katrina Restoration: Is It Permissible?
Federal Role in Katrina Restoration: Is It Permissible?
Human Events^ | 9/21/05 | Walter Williams
Last week, President Bush promised the nation that the federal government will
pay for most of the costs of repairing hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, adding,
"There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city
will rise again." There's no question that New Orleans and her sister Gulf
Coast cities have been struck with a major disaster, but should our
constitution become a part of the disaster? You say, "What do you mean,
Williams?" Let's look at it.
In February 1887, President Grover Cleveland, upon vetoing a bill appropriating
money to aid drought-stricken farmers in Texas, said, "I find no warrant for
such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power
and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of
individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public
service or benefit."
President Cleveland added, "The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can
always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has
been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases
encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and
weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the
indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which
strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."
President Cleveland vetoed hundreds of congressional spending measures during
his two-term presidency, often saying, "I can find no warrant for such an
appropriation in the Constitution." But Cleveland wasn't the only president who
failed to see charity as a function of the federal government. In 1854, after
vetoing a popular appropriation to assist the mentally ill, President Franklin
Pierce said, "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public
charity." To approve such spending, argued Pierce, "would be contrary to the
letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory
upon which the Union of these States is founded."
In 1796, Rep. William Giles of Virginia condemned a relief measure for fire
victims, saying that Congress didn't have a right to "attend to what generosity
and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require." A
couple of years earlier, James Madison, the father of our constitution, irate
over a $15,000 congressional appropriation to assist some French refugees,
said, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution
which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the
money of their constituents."
Here's my question: Were the nation's founders, and some of their successors,
callous and indifferent to human tragedy? Or, were they stupid and couldn't
find the passages in the Constitution that authorized spending "on the objects
of benevolence"?
Some people might say, "Aha! They forgot about the Constitution's general
welfare clause!" Here's what James Madison said: "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."
Thomas Jefferson explained, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for
the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." In 1828, South
Carolina Sen. William Drayton said, "If Congress can determine what constitutes
the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the
limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?"
Don't get me wrong about this. I'm not being too critical of President Bush or
any other politician. There's such a broad ignorance or contempt for
constitutional principles among the American people that any politician who
bore truth faith and allegiance to the Constitution would commit political
suicide.
--
Cheers,
M.A. Camp, Esq.
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