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Page Number: 46.0

14 

HEALTH AND HOSPITAL CORPORATION OF MARION 
CTY. v. TALEVSKI 
THOMAS, J., dissenting 

Consistent with its text, Federalist advocates of the Con-
stitution defended the General Welfare Clause to the rati-
fying public as nothing more than a limitation on the taxing 
power.  See, e.g., 3 Debates on the Constitution 207 (J. Elliot 
ed. 1876) (Elliot’s Debates) (E. Randolph, Virginia Conven-
tion)  (“The  plain  and  obvious  meaning  of  this  is,  that  no 
more duties, taxes, imposts, and excises, shall be laid, than 
are sufficient to pay the debts, and provide for the common 
defence and general welfare, of the United States”); N. Web-
ster,  An  Examination  Into  the  Leading  Principles  of  the
Federal Constitution, in Pamphlets on the Constitution of
the United States 50 (P. Ford ed. 1888) (“[I]n the very clause
which gives the power of levying duties and taxes, the pur-
poses to which the money shall be appropriated are speci-
fied,  viz.  to  pay  the  debts  and  provide  for  the  common  de-
fence  and  general  welfare  of  the  United  States”);  see  also
Natelson 47–49.  “[T]heir basic message was that the lan-
guage in question was not a grant at all—rather it was a 
restriction on federal authority.”  Id., at 39.  As Governor 
Randolph  emphatically  declared:  “Is  this  an  independent,
separate, substantive power, to provide for the general wel-
fare of the United States?  No, sir.”  3 Elliot’s Debates 466. 
Federalists went out of their way to specifically disclaim 
that the General Welfare Clause would vest any independ-
ent  regulatory  power.  For  example,  James  Madison  ex-
pressly  rejected  Anti-Federalist  attempts  to  portray  the 
General Welfare Clause as granting “an unlimited commis-

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Clause is simply a restriction on the Taxing Clause.  The Committee of 
Style slightly altered the text agreed to by the Convention by changing
the comma after “Excises” into a semicolon, so that the General Welfare 
Clause “became an additional power, conjoined to the power to tax, ra-
ther than merely a limitation on it.”  Hamburger 283.  The Convention, 
however,  recognized  the  alteration  and  restored  the  comma,  “corrobo-
rat[ing] the conclusion that the General Welfare Clause was not an inde-
pendent power.”  Natelson 28.