Regarding The Federal Government involvement in 'Helping Us'

By Brian Bonner

Here is some food for thought on federal disaster relief, social programs and welfare…

James Madison is the acknowledged father of the constitution. In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia. James Madison wrote disapprovingly. He said “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that Article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

President Franklin Pierce in 1854 vetoed a bill to help the mentally ill. He said “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity …. [this] would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

In 1897, President Grover Cleveland vetoed an Appropriation to provide disaster aid to victims of a Texas drought. His veto stated: “I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds … I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution. The lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people should support the government, the government should not support the people.”

Here is an anti-welfare anti-tax quote from Abraham Lincoln: “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by tearing down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do themselves.”

My, how far this country as descended into UNCONSTITUTIONAL socialism...

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