What are the limits of Federal power? Our Founders made them clear. We just don't enforce them.

Our Founders made it repeatedly clear in their speeches and their writings, in Convention and Ratification Debates, and in their letters and the Federalist Papers that the powers of the Federal Government were meant to be specific and limited. They are only supposed to do the things that the States cannot or should not be able to do individually.

Article I Section 8 of the Constitution lists 18 specific, enumerated powers that limit their authorization to make law or spend money on anything else. IF IT IS NOT ON THIS LIST, CONGRESS CANNOT MAKE A LAW THAT SPENDS A DIME OF PUBLIC MONEY.

Look at the many ways that they have ignored these limits to their power, as they have made laws and spent our money on areas that are nowhere to be found in the authority given to them in the Constitution: healthcare, national parks, education, environment, manufacturing, employment, zoning laws… the list goes on and on. Our Founders knew that all of these things were better left to the States to manage because they were closer to the people and more accountable.

In a speech to Congress in 1791, Thomas Jefferson enunciated the clear guidelines for what Congress could do and could not do:

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”

And while many try to point to the “General Welfare” clause in the beginning of this list as an unlimited license to spend public funds, our Founders made it clear that the enumerated powers were, indeed, the limit and that the “welfare clause” provided no authorization beyond the enumerated list. As Jefferson continued:

“Our tenet ever was… that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action.”

James Madison emphasized this also in Federalist 41, explaining that the welfare clause was actually a further limit to the list of enumerated powers, not a replacement.

"For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural or more common than first to use a general phrase and then to explain and quality it by a recital of particulars."

Today, our Representatives are creating laws and allowing regulations that affect virtually every aspect of our daily lives. This was never intended to be within the boundaries set for our Federal Government. From the conception of this Republic (not a democracy), the States were intended to be sovereign entities that would govern and provide for their citizenry; however, over time, the Federal Government has usurped more and more power from the States. We have let them.

We need to hold our elected representatives, both State and Federal, accountable for any law or spending by Congress that is beyond this list of ENUMERATED POWERS as Unconstitutional.