Unsurprising: Constitutional Ignorance in the Media

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States..." -- Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution

Leave it to "journalists" such as MSNBC's David Shuster (and many other modern liberals, for that matter) to interpret this clause as giving the government expansive powers which the Founding Fathers never intended.

The Tenth Amendment, with which Shuster seems to have a problem, instructs that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prhibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This was added as a safeguard to reinforce any government encroachment on states' rights. If Article I, Section 8 gave the government such far-reaching powers as Shuster contends, eventually leading to federal programs such as Medicare and Social Security, then what's the point of the Tenth Amendment?

And what would be the point of listing the other powers of government directly after the "common Defence and general Welfare" clause in Section 8? James Madison wrote about this in Federalist Paper No. 41 in defending the Constitution from the Anti-Federalists' concerns of expansive government control.

Madison also noted that the same terms ("common defense" and "general welfare") were previously used in the Articles of Confederation:

ART. III: The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. (emphasis added)

ART. VIII: All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint. (emphasis added)

These examples indicate that the Constitution was not originally intended to allow the government such expansive legislative powers.

But maybe I shouldn't be surprised that a cable news channel with a statist agenda would overlook any of this.