The clause as a preamble to enumerated powers
In the account given by Andrew J. Coulson, the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution authorizes the federal government to assess taxes and duties in order to promote the general welfare, among other things. Before Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the overwhelmingly upheld interpretation, in Coulson’s telling, was that the clause was a general preamble to the specific powers granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution — a setup for the actual list of powers, the enumerated powers. Bob Zadek supplies the phrase “enumerated powers,” and Coulson agrees with it. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
Coulson cites a 1941 book published by the US Printing Office and jointly by Congress and the administration, during Roosevelt’s presidency, on the adoption of the Constitution by the several states — a history meant to educate children about the origins of the system of government. The book contains a question and answer: asked where in the Constitution there is mention of education, the answer it gives is that there is none, and that education is a matter reserved for the states. Coulson’s point is that under Roosevelt’s administration it was still believed, at least by functionaries lower down the political chain, that there was no federal role and no federal right to an education. Zadek guesses “General Welfare” as the answer before Coulson delivers the book’s actual answer. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
The reinterpretation after Roosevelt
Coulson dates the change to the period after Roosevelt’s effort to twist the arm of the Supreme Court into approving his New Deal, which Coulson says Roosevelt eventually succeeded at doing. What followed was a virtually unlimited power for the federal government to legislate, created in the General Welfare Clause. On the new interpretation, the general welfare was its own power: anything the federal government did that legislators claimed would help people was absolutely constitutional. Coulson’s conclusion is that there is now effectively no limit on what the federal government can do. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
Applied to education, Coulson says it is only because of this wild interpretation of the clause that a federal Department of Education, a No Child Left Behind Act or a Race to the Top — which he describes as the current proposal by Obama and his Education Secretary Duncan — can exist at all. Absent the misinterpretation, he says, none of it would be legal and it would be overturned by the Supreme Court instantly. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
The Anti-Federalists as predictors
William Watkins Jr. approaches the clause from the ratification battle. After the Constitution was drafted, the country divided into Federalists, who supported it, and Anti-Federalists, who opposed it. Watkins describes the Anti-Federalists as Republicans with a small “r” who believed in a true form of republicanism, dedicated to government at the local level — what Jefferson would call his ward republics. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Watkins’s method is to run a tally, almost like a scoreboard, comparing the Federalists’ promises about how the Constitution would be limited and how certain clauses would confer no really new powers on the national government against the Anti-Federalists’ predictions of what those provisions would actually do. On that tally, he says, the Anti-Federalists were correct. They predicted over and over again how the national government would likely abuse certain clauses: the General Welfare clause at the beginning of Congress’s enumerated powers, the Necessary and Proper clause at the end of Congress’s enumerated powers, the Commerce clause, which Watkins says has today become a sort of universal jurisdiction for the national government over many matters, and the treaty power, which they predicted could be used to undermine the rights of the people and the states. Watkins’s image is that the Anti-Federalists had almost a crystal ball. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Spending and results
Coulson ties the clause to outcomes. He reports that since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society education legislation was passed, the federal government has spent $1.85 trillion on education. He describes charts of the performance of 17-year-old students on tests administered to nationally representative samples going back to 1970, and says the results are flatlines — not only in overall averages at the end of high school but in the specific things the Great Society programs were supposed to achieve, namely narrowing the achievement gap by race and by income. By race, by income, by parents’ level of education, he says the kids of college students and the kids of high school dropouts are about as far apart academically today as they were when the programs were enacted, though closing that gap was their central aim. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
Coulson’s summary is that the whole justification for these laws is the General Welfare Clause, and that if the clause is supposed to promote the general welfare, it is not promoting anything or anyone’s welfare — it has basically been a bamboozle. Zadek frames the same history as the accumulation of economic power in Washington and the use of that power to impose its will on local school districts, contrasting it with his own town of Sausalito, which he says has 7,000 people and where nothing escapes scrutiny and where citizens can act within about 48 hours when the city council does something they do not like, schools included. Coulson agrees that the same is absolutely impossible at the federal level. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
Across episodes
The two episodes treat the clause at different removes. In the 2009 episode, Coulson gives the doctrinal history — the pre-Roosevelt reading, the 1941 government book, the post-New Deal reinterpretation and its consequences for education statutes and spending — while Zadek supplies the framing about federalism, local control and the 1965 legislation. In the 2017 episode, Watkins places the clause inside a broader Anti-Federalist prediction about several provisions, alongside the Necessary and Proper clause, the Commerce clause and the treaty power, and does not discuss education or the New Deal reinterpretation. The excerpts show no development or revision between the two treatments; the later episode simply situates the same clause in a different argument.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not identify the case or cases in which the Supreme Court adopted the post-New Deal reading, nor which amendment or provision any such case turned on. They do not give the name of the 1965 education statute beyond Zadek’s reference to the 1965 legislation and the first federal bill involving education, and they do not state the state in which Sausalito is located. The 2009 excerpts break off mid-sentence at several points, and the 2017 excerpt ends with Zadek beginning a question, so nothing after those breaks is reported here.