Topic: Powers of Congress
Senator: Coburn
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
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COBURN: I want to go to one other area that I have some concern about. I know my concerns are opposite from some of those who have a different philosophy in life.
Many of the questions posed to you have focused on our concerns about an activist judiciary. My opening statement expressed some of those concerns. However, I'm equally concerned about an activist Congress that goes beyond its bounds, a Congress that routinely ignores its own constitutional boundaries.
Historically, the debate about the role and scope of Congress has focused on the general welfare clause. As we all know, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.
The 10th amendment also spells out limitations on congressional power. We had the discussion yesterday on the toad, I believe. The 10th amendment states the power not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.
COBURN: And I want to give you a quote that James Madison said, because in his wisdom, he anticipated that would try to stretch the definition of the founders.
And we wrote with respect to the words "general welfare": "I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
In Federalist Paper 45, Madison writes, "The power is 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 infinite."
Do you agree with James Madison's interpretation of the general welfare clause, that the powers of the Congress should be fundamentally limited, or do you agree with the modern prevailing wisdom of both political parties, particularly appropriators, who believe Congress' role is fundamentally unlimited?
ROBERTS: Well, I agree with Madison's view in general that the Constitution does contain limitations on the federal authority. The general welfare clause, and in particular the necessary and proper clause of course, have been interpreted in many of Chief Justice John Marshall's early opinions to recognize, though, that the scope of authority given the Congress is broad and broad enough to confront the problems that, in Chief Justice John Marshall's case, were confronted by a young nation and helped to bind it together as a nation, and broad enough today to confront the problems that Congress addresses.
But the notion that the Constitution was one of limited powers, albeit broad under the necessary and proper clause and even the general welfare clause, as interpreted by Chief Justice John Marshall in these early opinions, that recognition doesn't undermine the framers' essential vision that we are dealing with the federal system in which vast powers reside with the states and that the federal government is one of limited powers; broad in, obviously, particular areas and broad under the necessary and proper clause but limited powers nonetheless.
COBURN: Thank you.
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