'General welfare'

Breck England (Readers' Forum, Sept. 19) speculates that the Founding Fathers intended the term "general welfare" to include government-provided health care. There is no need to guess at what the writers of the Constitution meant by the term general welfare; let's look at what the founders themselves say. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, stated, "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." Thomas Jefferson further clarified that "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated."

Put another way, government-provided health care is just one more progressive step toward transforming the United States of America into something it was never intended to be.

Colin Quincy

West Jordan