Thomas, J., dissenting
instance, expenditures to construct a road would be justified only if the road could be constructed under the Post Roads Clause or some other enumerated power. See Renz 108–119; see also J. Eastman, Restoring the “General” to the General Welfare Clause, 4 Chap. L. Rev. 63, 72 (2001). As this side of the debate also took a narrow view of the enumerated powers, it generally argued that the Federal Government could not fund internal improvements without a constitutional amendment. See Sky 140–141. The other camp, associated with the nationalist views of Hamilton and Joseph Story, understood the General Welfare Clause to “include a very broad spending authority,” which could be applied to purposes not specifically enumerated by the Constitution. Natelson 12; see also Renz 124–126.
Even this camp, however, understood that “the General Welfare Clause does not include a power to regulate.” Natelson 12; see also Sky 96. Hamilton, for example, made clear that the spending power did not “imply a power to do whatever else should appear to Congress conducive to the general welfare.” Report on the Subject of Manufactures 37 (1791). As he further elaborated, “[a] power to appropriate money [does] not carry a power to do any other thing, not authorized in the Constitution, either expressly or by fair implication.” Ibid. Instead, any regulatory authority had to be tethered to some independent regulatory power. Thus, under this view, Congress could spend money on roads and canals unconnected with the enumerated powers, but it would have to depend on the States for any regulatory legislation needed to complete and preserve the improvements.
This understanding that the spending power itself extended only to the “application of money,” ibid. (emphasis in original), led Hamilton to favor a constitutional amendment “empowering Congress to open canals.” Letter from A. Hamilton to J. Dayton (1799), in 10 Works of Alexander Hamilton 334 (H. Lodge ed. 1904). After all, opening canals
