A Short History of Congress's Power to Tax

A Short History of Congress's Power to Tax The Supreme Court has long distinguished the regulatory from the taxing power. “ The first enumerated power that the Constitution grants to Congress is the "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."  CLICK FOR VIDEO The text indicates that the taxing power is not plenary, but can be used only for defined ends and objects—since a comma, not a semicolon, separated the clauses on means (taxes) and ends (debts, defense, welfare). This punctuation was no small matter. In 1798, Pennsylvania Rep. Albert Gallatin said that fellow Pennsylvania Rep. Gouverneur Morris, chairman of the Committee on Style at the Constitutional Convention, had smuggled in the semicolon in order to make Congress's taxing power limitless, but that the alert Roger Sherman had the comma restored. ... The punctuation debate simply reinforced James Madison's point in Federalist No. 41 that Congress could tax and spend only for those objects enumerated, primarily in Article I, Section 8 [Continue WSJ] We are now faced with a new constitutional dilemma, it seems to me.  That is, what if a significant number no longer care about original intent, or even about the constitution itself—except as a cloak of legality where none exists?  What then? ”