Democrat Leader's Rx for Tyrannical Government

In attempting to explain the authority for the proposed health care legislation's requirement that individuals purchase health care insurance, Rep. Steny Hoyer last week claimed that Congress could require people to buy a great many things on the basis of the Constitution's reference to the "general welfare."

This creates a quandary. It long has been recognized that the reference does not confer any authority or power on the federal government as the "general welfare" is mentioned only as a purpose of the Constitution. So one has to wonder about a great many things, such as:

* Why, if  the mention of the general welfare is all Congress needs as a basis for any action it wishes to take, did the founders bother going to all the trouble to enumerate in detail the specific powers the Constitution confers on the government's various branches?

* Why does the Constitution provide that any and all powers not enumerated and specifically conferred on the federal government are reserved to the states and the people?

Now Mr. Hoyer is not just any member of the House of Reprehensibles. He is its majority leader and thus second in the body's hierarchy, only to its squeaker, Nasty Nancy Pelosi, who, incidentally, has made similar bogus claims.

So one is compelled to wonder whether we are being led by people who are crazy, dishonest, evil, ignorant, stupid, or some combination of all of these things.

Whatever the answer, the idea that Congress has the power to impose on the country anything that a majority of its members deems to be (or can pass off as being) in furtherance of the general welfare is antithetical to the concept of a limited government. The idea would justify an unlimited government of men not laws . . . and therefore a tyrannical government.