Re: Tea party antics could end up burning Republicans

 
The Founders then went on in Article One, Section Eight, Clause One, and wrote:
 

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE AND GENERAL WELFARE of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

"To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States;" that is to say, "to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare;" for the laying of taxes is the power, and
the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. Congress are not to lay taxes ad libitum, for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts, or provide for the welfare, of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do any thing they please, to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the
good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they pleased. It is an established rule of construction, where a phrase will hear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which will render all the others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect. It is known that the very power now proposed as a means, was rejected as an end by the Convention which formed the Constitution -- Thomas Jefferson, 1791