"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and
are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take
the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in
every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public
treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children,
establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may
assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of
all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest
object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police,
would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of
Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would
subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the
limited Government established by the people of America."
--James Madison (1751-1836),
Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: referring to a bill to subsidize cod fisherman introduced in the first year of the new Congress
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