Entitlements

Myth: The Second Bill of Rights, proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, entitles Americans to: Employment with a living wage, freedom from unfair business competition and monopolies, housing, medical care, education, and social security.

Truth: For the founding fathers, protecting rights meant providing an environment where free men could strive and succeed, as well as fail. Private charity will always be more efficient and effective that government-controlled entitlements.

The Bill of Rights, Amendments I-X, prohibit the federal government from violating certain fundamental rights based in natural law and common law. The federal government, since the F. D. Roosevelt era, has created dozens of “entitlements” which are unconstitutional since they are not in the enumerated powers.

They have done this by promising benefits to people while forcibly taking the necessary funds from others. Americans have come to take these programs, and the promises they make, for granted. But what the government gives they can take away; any of these programs can legally be stopped at any time. The funds are not “stored” anywhere, but have been spent by the federal government, leaving trillions of dollars in liabilities for benefits that will soon come due. Entitlements are the primary factor driving the federal deficits and debt, and must be addressed now to avoid impending financial collapse. Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans’ Benefits, and other health entitlements also have played a large role in the rapidly increasing costs of health care, as the federal price caps for services they pay for forces those providing services to shift costs to others.

The founding fathers were acutely aware of the danger latent in the government taking on these powers. As such, they
specifically kept them out of the Constitution. As Madison 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.” He also said, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” And “With respect to the two word, ‘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.”

Clearly, the general welfare clause, cannot be construed to allow for entitlements. The clause was not intended to give any more power to Congress and was actually a restriction detailing that all the other powers given Congress had to be exercised in ways beneficial to the nation as a whole. Not only do entitlement programs fail the test of constitutionality because they are not tied to any powers enumerated or implied, but also because they benefit only specific groups, they cannot be considered legitimate ends of American government.

Critical Observations on Social Security