“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States” Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution.

I was watching The Colbert Report not too many months ago when he had the founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. It seems that these very wealthy and successful men give lots of money to causes that take money from everyone else. Who says money can’t buy happiness? Anyways, they proudly displayed a big chart that demonstrated how the Federal Government spends over half of its revenue on the Pentagon. They were upset that less than half went to welfare programs.

The US Constitution and the philosophies it holds are the reason the US is home to so many successful entrepreneurs such as Ben and such as Jerry. One would think that this would cause these two men to pay more attention to its words.

But back to the point. The Constitution allows the Federal Government to collect taxes for two main purposes, common defense and general welfare. Common defense seems like it is easy to interpret. Make sure another country doesn’t attack this one. Prevent radicals from hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings. One could easily say that this includes the protection of our rights, which is why they use tax dollars to enforce laws. Our rights are defined in the Bill of Rights, some clearly, others not so clearly.

What gets people hung up is the other purpose, general welfare. Just looking at the phrase, one could quickly apply very broad measures. One could use it to justify things like Social Security, Medicare, socialized Health Care. One could do this if one did not pay attention to this little thing called Intent and to the little list in the same section.

More on Intent later.