The Constitution gives congress the the power of social welfare

This is a debate about whether Congress, under the U.S. Constitution, has the power to spend on social welfare programs. This is not a debate about whether we think that the current social welfare system in the United States is well run, whether we think social welfare programs are a good idea in general, nor whether it was wise of the founders to give Congress as much latitude as it has. This is a debate about law, not about policy.My opponent has spent a great deal of time refuting an argument he thinks I'm going to make -- an argument that confuses the word "welfare" as it appears in the resolution as in "social welfare" with "general welfare" as it appears in the constitution. Let me assure him, I have no intention of equating the two. To this end, I will never refer to "welfare" in the abstract, but rather always to either "social welfare" (SW) or "general welfare" (GW).1. No Restriction CitedThere are two ways a congressional action could be unconstitutional. First, as my opponent points out, because of the doctrine of limited powers as enumerated by the 10th amendment, if the action does not fall within one of the broad powers granted to congress, it is unconstitutional. Most of these broad grants of power appear in Article 1 Section 8 [1]. The other way an action can be unconstitutional is if it falls within one of the broad grants of congressional power, but is prohibited by one of the specific limitations on congressional power. Most of these limitations are in Article 1 Section 9, and the bill of rights [2,3].My opponent has made no argument that SW spending is specifically prohibited by the constitution. Consequently, any such argument is waved. I thank him for this as it allows us to focus the rest of the debate on the far more interesting issue of whether SW spending falls within one of the broad powers granted to Congress by the Constitution.2. Welfare clause grants plenary spending powerSo as to not confuse things with the preamble, if I refer to the "general welfare clause" I'm referring to the first subsection of Article I Section 8, which grants Congress the power:"To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"[1]I accept my opponent's definition of the word "welfare" as it applies to GW:"the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group"[4]Two powers are granted to Congress in this clause. First it grants congress the power to "lay and collect" taxes. Second, it specifies what Congress can do with the money. It can pay the U.S.' national debt and it can "provide for the common defense and general welfare."This spending clause is an astoundingly broad grant of power. It grants Congress the power to spend money (using my opponent's definition of GW) to "provide for the common defense and the [health happiness, and fortunes] of the United States". That is, once money has entered the U.S. Treasury (either through borrowing or taxation), Congress can spend that money on any program that it believes promotes the health, happiness, and fortunes of the people of the United States. Our congress, for better or worse, has decided that spending money on food stamps promote the collective or "general" health, happiness, and fortunes of the U.S.3. The founders agreed the spending clause was broadAlexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the constitution, believed that the spending power of congress was "plenary"[5]. He stated of the phrase "general welfare" that "The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used."[5] Thus, once again we see the broad spending power granted to congress. Congress does not have the power to place a stoplight at every intersection, but it does have the power to pay for them if the states decide to install them.Acts of the first Congress are generally held to be constitutional because many of the legislatures were authors of the constitution and presumably knew what it meant. There were at least two laws enacted by the first congress that clearly establish Congressional plenary spending power to promote GW. They are chapter IX, "An Act for the establishment and support of Lighthouses, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers"[6] and chapter XXIV "An Act providing for the payment of the Invalid Pensioners of the United States"[7]. Neither of these actions fall under any of the grants of power outside of the GW clause. In fact, the lighthouses act is actually the first congressional earmark stating: It shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to provide ... a lighthouse near the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay.[6]If congress has the power to take over payments of pensions to people who were made invalid during the Revolutionary War, then it has the power to make payments to people today. Congress has the power to spend on anything (such as lighthouses) that is not specifically prohibited elsewhere. Again, whether the use of this power to make SW payments is wise or not is irrelevant to this debate.4. New Hampshire constitution.The NH constitution is completely irrelevant to the current resolution. Although it states that governments instituted for the "general good" (again a very broad power) rather than the "general welfare", this makes no difference to my argument. This point regarding the NH constitution is only relevant to rebut wordplay confusing SW with GW. I have no intention of making such an argument.5. Capitalization and punctuationMy opponent makes a few points regarding capitalization and punctuation, that I believe lack merit but I will address briefly nonetheless.First my opponent attempts to make a point that the 'T' in "To collect a revenue" is capitalized and the 't' in "to pay the Debts..." is not. First, he give no explanation of what he thinks the significance of the discrepancy is. He claims only that the uncapitalized "to" has less emphasis. He leaves the implication that this somehow means that the clause to follow is less important but doesn't even make this point explicitly, much less argue why it is so.The reason for the discrepancy between "To collect" and "to pay" is obvious if you look at the complete section. Rather than writing several complete sentences that would all use the same independent clause "Congress shall have the Power", the authors used a sort of shorthand. That is, rather than writing:Congress shall have the power to lay and ...Congress shall have the power to borrow ...Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce ...They wrote:Congress shall have the power To lay ... Excises, to pay ... To borrow ... To regulate commerce ...They wrote the first part of all those sentences once and then just wrote the second half on its own. While I have no doubt that some lazy language arts teachers have said a comma represents a "pause" rather than going into coordinating conjunctions and prepositional phrases, we need a little more precision here. The sentence "Congress shall have the power to lay ... taxes ..., to pay ..." has two prepositional phrases (PP), each following the word "to". The comma in this sense is used to separate two PPs from each other. Whereas one does not typically separate a prepositional phrase that follows the independent clause.[8]References[1] http://www.usconstitution.net...[2] http://www.usconstitution.net...[3] http://www.law.cornell.edu...[4] http://oxforddictionaries.com...[5] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu...[6] http://en.wikisource.org...[7] http://en.wikisource.org...[8] http://owl.english.purdue.edu...