DEMOCRATS SHRED CONSTITUTION

"With respect to the two words '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."

-- James Madison

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare."

Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute.

At his weekly press briefing Tuesday, Hoyer was asked, as we have asked, just where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to force people to buy health insurance or force those who refuse to pay a penalty (or by its true description, a tax.)

Hoyer pointed to Article 1, Section 8, which gives the Congress the power to raise taxes in order to "provide for common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Does that give Congress the authority to buy things like health insurance?

Human Events editor-at-large Terence P. Jeffrey makes the point that broccoli is good for our general welfare, but can Congress make us buy it and charge us if we don't? Losing a few pounds would help us all and reduce health care costs, but can Congress mandate health club memberships? Hoyer thinks so.

"Well, in promoting the general welfare the Constitution obviously gives broad authority to Congress, broad authority to effect that end," Hoyer said. "The end we're trying to effect is to make health care affordable, so I think clearly this is within our constitutional responsibility." Really.

We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action," the Congressional Budget Office concluded. "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."

Nor can it, according to constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin. "Congressman Hoyer is wrong," he said. "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."

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