Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-806_2dp3.pdf
Page Number: 45

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

13 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

source of a general congressional spending power because 
“it fails to provide any authority at all to spend money ac-
quired otherwise than by taxation.”  Ibid.  Yet, “[t]he federal 
treasury receives money from many other sources, includ-
ing  penalties,  fines,  user  fees,  leases,  surplus  property 
sales,  gifts,  bequests,  and  returns  on  investments.”    Ibid. 
And those sums are a pittance in comparison to those raised
under  Congress’  Borrowing  Clause  power,  see  Art.  I.,  §8,
cl. 2, which has always been one of the major sources of fed-
eral funds.  Unless federal spending on credit and from rev-
enues  not  derived  from  “Taxes,  Duties,  Imposts  and  Ex-
cises”  is  unconstitutional,  the  General  Welfare  Clause 
cannot be the source of Congress’ spending power.

The Clause certainly is not an independent grant of reg-
ulatory power to legislate for the general welfare, as the his-
tory  of  the  Constitution’s  framing  and  ratification  makes
clear.  The Philadelphia Convention initially adopted a res-
olution  that  Congress  be  authorized  “ ‘to  legislate  in  all 
cases  for  the  general  interests  of  the  Union,  and  also  in
those to which the States are separately incompetent, or in
which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted
by  the  exercise  of  individual  legislation.’ ”  J.  Renz,  What 
Spending Clause? (Or the President’s Paramour), 33 John
Marshall L. Rev. 81, 104 (1999) (Renz).  But the Convention 
later abandoned this vesting of a broad power to legislate 
for the general welfare in favor of the enumeration of spe-
cific federal legislative powers and the creation of a taxing
power limited by the General Welfare Clause.  See R. Natel-
son, The General Welfare Clause and the Public Trust: An 
Essay in Original Understanding, 52 Kan. L. Rev. 1, 23–29
(2003) (Natelson); see also Renz 104–105 (counting five in-
stances in which the Convention considered and rejected at-
tempts “to insert a grant of general legislative power into 
the Constitution”).8 

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8 One  instance  in  particular  demonstrates  that  the  General  Welfare