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Originally Posted by samcol
I like how you leave out the fact that FDR had to stack the courts in order to get his New Deal legislation to be upheld in the courts. The 'general welfare' clause was nothing more than a preamble to section 8 for 150 or so years until he did this.
So, saying Ron Paul misrepresents it is a huge stretch when it was the law of the land for so long and it's change was done in a very machiavellian way.
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Please check your facts.
First, Roosevelt's plan to "stack the court" (by adding a new Justice for every sitting Justice over 70 yrs of age) was never enacted....so he never "stacked the court" any more so than any other president - by waiting until sitting Justices retired or died (other than the fact that he was the longest sitting president and ultimately appointed more Justices).
But putting that aside, in regard to the general welfare clause, the Butler case was in 1936 under a relatively conservative Court,
BEFORE Roosevelt appointed any Justices to the Court. The majority said:
The clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated [,] is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States. … It results that the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.
Although the law in question was overturned, on other grounds, the interpretation of the general welfare clause was expanded in the following year in the Helvering - Davis case, with one FDR appointee....hardly a stacked court.
The Court sustained the old-age benefits provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935 and adopted an expansive view of the power of the federal government to tax and spend for the general welfare. In Helvering, the Court maintained that although Congress's power to tax and spend under the General Welfare clause was limited to general or national concerns, Congress itself could determine when spending constituted spending for the general welfare.
http://www.answers.com/topic/general-welfare-clause
No court before or after 1936-37 has ever ruled that the general welfare clause was simply a preamble...and in over 200+ years, no legislation passed by Congress has ever been struck down because it did not serve the general welfare.
Ron Paul's interpretation of Sec 8 and the general welfare clause is just that- his personal interpretation. It was never the "law of the land" and for him to suggest otherwise is dishonest.