GENERAL WELFARE IN PRACTICE The First Congress refused to make a loan to a glass manufacturer after several Members expressed the view that such an appropriation would be unconstitutional. The Fourth Congress did not believe it had the power to provide relief to the citizens of Savannah, Georgia, after a devastating fire destroyed the entire city. Rejected the dredging of the Savannah River as it was for local use and approved a Lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay as it affected maritime transportation of the nation. President Madison vetoed as unconstitutional an internal improvements bill that was passed by Congress at the very end of his presidency. Madison vetoed a federal highway bill in 1817 because such expenditures were not authorized by our Constitution and, moreover, were clearly the responsibility of the states, as specified in the Tenth Amendment. In the last year of his presidency, James Monroe, finding the line between “general” welfare and local welfare a hard one to define, signed a few bills to fund surveys for some local internal improvement projects. Adams’s resurrection of the Hamiltonian position became the focus of the next presidential election, contributing to Adams’s defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson, who promptly put to rest “this dangerous doctrine” by vetoing a $200 million appropriation for the purchase of stock in the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Company and for the direct construction of other “ordinary” roads and canals by the government itself. So strong was his veto message that for four years Congress did not even try to pass another such bill. In 1834 congress passed an act to improve the navigation of the Wabash River, Jackson again responded forcefully, rejecting as a “fallacy” the contention that the Spending Clause conferred upon Congress the power to do whatever seemed “to conduce to the public good.” President James K. Polk vetoed subsequent congressional efforts to fund internal improvements. He vetoed a bill providing $6,000 for projects in the Wisconsin territory—constitutionally permissible because of Congress’s broader powers over federal territories—but it also included $500,000 for a myriad of projects in the existing states. Polk contended that to interpret the Spending Clause to permit such appropriations would allow “combinations of individual and local interests [that would be] strong enough to control legislation, absorb the revenues of the country, and plunge the government into a hopeless indebtedness.”
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 21:07:16 +0000
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