General welfare

There was a discussion on the news about divorce and they quoted Jesus who said, Matthew 5:31-32 "It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. The definition of marital unfaithfulness has been expanded to include physical or verbal abuse, excessive drinking, unwillingness to work and my favorite, irreconcilable differences, which can mean things like he doesn’t pick up his dirty socks and he leaves the cabinet doors open. I bring this up not because of any particular interest in divorce but to illustrate the parallels in the interpretation of the general welfare clause in the constitution. This clause was put in to lay out the two reasons for taxation. to pay the debts of the United States, and to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. This has come to mean the transfer of money from one group to another. The group with the best lobbyist will usually come out ahead. We have home owners who deduct their interest payments, farmers who are paid not to plant, businesses that can deduct the cost of health care all the way down the line to the people who get money just because they don’t have much. This whole process has led to the campaign finance mess where groups are buying face time in front of elected officials who maintain they are not influenced by money. We have drifted far afield from the general welfare where many of the expenditures in the budget, things like the State Department spending $630,000 for face book “likes”, border on the ridiculous.