Today's Quotes

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger
on that article of the Constitution
which granted a right to Congress of expending,
on the objects of benevolence,
the money of their constituents."
-- James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: 1792, in disapproval of Congress appropriating $15,000 to assist some French refugees

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."
-- Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare,
and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare,
they may take the care of religion into their own hands;
they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish
and pay them out of their public treasury;
they may take into their own hands the education of children,
establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union;
they may assume the provision of the poor;
they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads;
in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation
down to the most minute object of police,
would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power
of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for,
it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature
of the limited Government established by the people of America."
-- James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: referring to a bill to subsidize cod fisherman introduced in the first year of the new Congress