“Other people’s money”
“Socialist governments do traditionally make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.”
Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister, 1979 – 1990
She added, “. . . They’re now trying to control everything, . . . reducing the choice available to ordinary people.” Does this sound like our government since the 1940s when President Roosevelt’s Supreme Court gave Congress the unconstitutional power to spend unlimited amounts of “other people’s money” for the “general Welfare?”
Before that ruling, the Supreme Court declared several of Roosevelt’s economic programs unconstitutional, infuriating him because he believed the government’s role was to spend “other people’s money” to do whatever it deemed needed for the “general Welfare.” Further, he was certain he had the people’s mandate to do just that.
He started his mission to change the Constitution saying, “. . . we shall seek such clarifying amendments (to the Constitution) as will assure the power to enact those laws.” This statement proves that he understood the constitutionally limited powers of Congress and changing those powers required an amendment to the constitution, not merely a Supreme Court ruling.
But with disdain for the Constitution and “We the people,” he lamented that “it would take months or years to get substantial agreement upon the . . . language of an amendment. It would (then) take . . . years thereafter to get a two-thirds majority . . . in both houses of the Congress. Then would come the long course of ratification by three-quarters of all the states (We the people).”
Roosevelt saw the people as an impediment. He saw amending the Constitution as too cumbersome, too burdensome and too time-consuming. He demanded a way around the Constitution, a way around “We the people,” a way to change the Constitution without an amendment. Ironically, the process to amend the Constitution that he showed so much contempt was precisely the process the founding fathers wanted and the Constitution required.
Roosevelt continued, demanding a Congress that could do more than the Constitution allowed, a Congress that could do anything it deemed for the “general Welfare.”
But, is that what the founding fathers intended? The phrase “general Welfare” goes to the reason the states created a federal government – to handle needs the states had in common. To handle needs requiring a common entity to oversee on behalf of their combined “general Welfare.” To handle needs like national defense, relationships with foreign governments, trade with foreign nations. Simply, they created a federal government to handle the specific enumerated “general Welfare” needs the states had in common, thereby limiting its use of “other people’s money.”
Even so, Supreme Court Justices, more frightened with loss of power than with their oath to the United States, gave the president his tribute, declaring the words “general Welfare” to be an enumerated power of Congress, knowingly violating the intents of the founding fathers and the meaning of the Constitution. The Court gave Congress the power to use unlimited sums of “other people’s money” for anything it claimed needed for the “general Welfare.”
The founding fathers gifted us a nation providing strong state governments and a subservient federal government with limited, enumerated powers. Our supposed limited government now spends bankrupting sums of money for “general Welfare” entitlements, paying for them with evermore “other people’s money.”
It takes neither a law degree nor an abundance of education to understand that the founding fathers never intended the federal government to have unlimited power to spend “other people’s money.” “We the people” are to approve changes to the Constitution, not the Supreme Court.
We have run out of “other people’s money.” Maybe the next time we put our hand out, we need to be reaching for a shovel rather than “other people’s money.”
One Response to ““Other people’s money””
Walt Setzer says:
February 27, 2011 at 3:47 PM
Hi Craig,
Just thought I would let you know that I am running for Sheriff here in Pima County, AZ. Our current Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik is the one who has been on tv calling us intolerant racists. It is time for him to go. I have some pretty good support, and the Tea Party has been supportive so far.
Walt