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Madison would veto health care forthwith

by Bryan Fischer Date 8/21/2009

My good friend Adam Graham points out that James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution and the father of the Bill of Rights, once vetoed a bill that would have provided federal funding for canals and roads on the grounds that
building canals and roads is not one of the “enumerated powers” given to the federal government in the Constitution.

Said Madison in his veto message,

The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary
and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States…

To refer the power in question to the clause “to provide for common defense and general welfare” would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which
follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them...

In the Federalist Papers, he was even more explicit:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external
objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of
affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

It’s not hard to imagine what Madison would think of legislation which would direct the federal government to take over the entire health care industry. The esteemed Founder surely would have repeated himself if such a bill came to his
desk: “It does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers.” He would veto this monstrosity so fast it would make his nose bleed.