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It probably doesn't apply in this case, but would Congress have the ability to make treaties with foreign nations and give them medical aid under those enumerated powers? Or could Congress make use of enumerated powers related to raising armies, and provision the military with extra medical personnel and supplies, and then (with permission of affected countries) send military doctors in to provide substantially similar medical aid to that currently being given?
Like, I'm all for the idea of doing things "the right way" within the legal framework we have, but surely Congress just giving medical aid to foreign nations isn't far off from things they could do with enumerated powers under the Constitution?
It's either enumerated or it isn't. "Not far off" means "not enumerated" means "unconstitutional."
Given the existence of the Necessary and Proper clause, "not far off" means that you have to look into the purpose and see if the activity is necessary and proper to an enumerated power. The framers intended the delegated powers to be broad - particularly the spending power. There is no territorial limit on the spending power in the Constitution, and if controlling communicable diseases isn't the "general welfare" I don't know what is.
I don't know if the early US did contribute financially to the plague-control infrastructure in the Mediterranean (the British certainly did), but am pretty certain that the Framers thought that was the sort of thing that the government should be able to do.
you don't think it's odd the framers bothered with the other "enumerated powers" when your interpretation of Art. I, s 8, cl 1, along with the necessary and proper clause, makes almost all of them entirely superfluous?
it's a wonder why multiple framers wrote multiple letters to the press which repeatedly described how restricted the enumerated powers were, not to mention the Constitution was only ratified based on a promise to include the Bill of Rights which contains the 9th and 10th Amendments again clarifying these powers should be restrictive (as all others were reserved to the people and states, respectively)
the modern interpretation by the courts is, despite all ink to the contrary, pretty much what yours is, but that's because the Constitution has been long dead from prior violations, not because of the Framers' intentions
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Do you think the Louisiana purchase was a legal act under the Constitution, given that there is no explicit enumerated power for Congress to acquire territory from other countries?
I get wanting to be something like an Originalist, but I think that a lot of people that hold the position do so as a kind of cop out. It is much easier to say, "We can't debate foreign aid, the Constitution doesn't explicitly allow it", than to say, "I am opposed to my tax dollars being spent on foreign aid for reasons X, Y, and Z." But the problem is, sometimes the Constitution does actually seem to allow the thing (and not in a nonsense "Living Constitution" way.)
I think if you're creative, most of the limitations are hardly limitations at all. The Federal government was able to end hotel segregation by using the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate hotels that host people from other states. That seems like a much more justifiable use of the Interstate Commerce clause than that one outrageous case of regulating how much corn a man is allowed to grow on his own property, and which would never cross state lines.
(EDIT: Looking it up, at least one kind of foreign medical aid is done "by the book" in exactly the way I describe. The US Department of Defense will send the military in to foreign disaster areas to set up field hospitals and military medical teams. So, we can ask the object level question - should US tax dollars be spent on such foreign aid? I don't think the "but the Constitution" dodge is really possible here.)
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Wickard v Filburn is a travesty, and every day the Supreme Court goes without reversing it is another day of ignominy and shame.
That still doesn't mean that there's any interstate commerce when someone rents a hotel room. The commerce happens when the man crosses the border with money. The renting of the hotel room only ever occurs within one state.
There should be no standing army in the first place, but rather state militias. This is not by the book in any way.
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With the caveat that this is way in the past, so it's purely academic: this was very clearly illegal under the Constitution. I don't see any way you can argue that it was legal under a framework where the federal government only is allowed explicitly enumerated powers. The Constitution (well, the bill of rights but since they are amendments it amounts to the same thing) is quite clear that anything not allowed in the Constitution is reserved for the states/people.
I agree. The question was meant to highlight the problems with Originalism and similar positions. The Founding Fathers were wise, but in setting up a government of limited powers, they failed to account for a very obvious case like acquiring new territory. Thomas Jefferson was only the 3rd president of the United States - it didn't take long for the cracks to show.
The Founding Generation were all alive to see how inadequate the Constitution of limited powers they had crafted was. It didn't take long for people like Alexander Hamilton to try to craft a national bank, or for presidents to hide the fact that they were engaging in clandestine naval warfare without congressional approval or oversight, or for the Supreme Court to seize the right of judicial review, or for Jefferson to decide the treaty power includes the ability to acquire more territory. I'm sympathetic to Originalism, and I think in an ideal world it would be how the law was actually interpreted, but the ink had hardly dried on the Constitution when the first violations of its framework happened.
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