Thomas, J., dissenting
Consistent with its text, Federalist advocates of the Constitution defended the General Welfare Clause to the ratifying public as nothing more than a limitation on the taxing power. See, e.g., 3 Debates on the Constitution 207 (J. Elliot ed. 1876) (Elliot’s Debates) (E. Randolph, Virginia Convention) (“The plain and obvious meaning of this is, that no more duties, taxes, imposts, and excises, shall be laid, than are sufficient to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare, of the United States”); N. Webster, An Examination Into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States 50 (P. Ford ed. 1888) (“[I]n the very clause which gives the power of levying duties and taxes, the purposes to which the money shall be appropriated are specified, viz. to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States”); see also Natelson 47–49. “[T]heir basic message was that the language in question was not a grant at all—rather it was a restriction on federal authority.” Id., at 39. As Governor Randolph emphatically declared: “Is this an independent, separate, substantive power, to provide for the general welfare of the United States? No, sir.” 3 Elliot’s Debates 466.
Federalists went out of their way to specifically disclaim that the General Welfare Clause would vest any independent regulatory power. For example, James Madison expressly rejected Anti-Federalist attempts to portray the General Welfare Clause as granting “an unlimited commis-
Clause is simply a restriction on the Taxing Clause. The Committee of Style slightly altered the text agreed to by the Convention by changing the comma after “Excises” into a semicolon, so that the General Welfare Clause “became an additional power, conjoined to the power to tax, rather than merely a limitation on it.” Hamburger 283. The Convention, however, recognized the alteration and restored the comma, “corroborat[ing] the conclusion that the General Welfare Clause was not an independent power.” Natelson 28.
