'It is our duty' to reform entitlements
January 24th 12:00:00 AM
President Bush again addressed the need for entitlement reform in his State of the Union last night. "Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience -- and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty -- and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits," the president said. "With enough good sense and good will, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid -- and save Social Security."
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Posted by Ryan Lynch
Comments
There is a lot of talk today about fixing Social Security. The debate should not be how to fix it, we should be asking why Social Security exists, since it is obviously unconstitutional. The only reason it was upheld by the Supreme Court, in the case of Helvering v. Davis, was because the Court cowardly went along with Roosevelt in response to his proposed court-packing scheme.
I would assume that the supposed authority for Social Security came from the term "general welfare" ("Congress shall have 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.") Even a brief study of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers would refute that assumption. The powers granted to Congress immediately follow the previous statement. Those powers listed could be said to define what is meant by providing for the common defense and the general welfare. Abraham Baldwin, a member of the Constitutional Convention, said "to provide for the common Defence and general Welfare" had "never been considered as a source of legislative power, as it is only a member introduced to limit the other parts of the sentence." Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution sets the limits to constitutional power, there is no power in Congress beyond those boundaries.
It may be constructive to consider an early bill to pay a subsidy to cod fishermen. The bill was rejected, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident. ... For in the phrase 'to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' it is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first, or are distinct and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following."
It appears to me that a large majority of what Congress does is unconstitutional. While we may never get back to the type of national government that was intended by the founders, we should certainly try. I believe getting rid of Social Security would be a great place to start.
Posted by Tom on January 24th 07:22:15 PM
Tom,
There are certainly a lot of people that agree with you. One of the debates at the outset of Social Security was deciding the relationship between benefits and contributions. Specifically, some people thought it would be unfair to force individuals to contribute to a government retirement program if a better option existed in the private market. As a solution, the early program participants received huge sums of money in exchange for rather meager contributions. Even until recently, retirees found that Social Security was a pretty good deal. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in the eyes of some), those days have passed. Today's young people will get an embarrassingly low rate of return on our contributions, and the only way to correct that without getting rid of the system is to allow some level of investment.
Posted by Ryan on January 25th 01:36:38 PM
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