Thus far in this series of essays we have covered four of the five basic questions that I set before you in the initial essay, namely “Does the government have the right to tax?”, “What are the kinds of taxes?”, “Upon whom should the taxes be levied?”, and “What proportion of the taxes should these individuals pay?” It is now time to ask the all-important question, which is “What are the legitimate purposes for which government should collect taxes?” The importance of this question is readily apparent for it drives all of the other questions and especially the issue of how much in taxes citizens should have to pay. For American citizens that answer was laid down in the limited and enumerated powers granted by us, the people, to the central government in our Constitution. But before delving into that sacred document, consider these words by Montesquieu, a brilliant political philosopher who had an enormous impact upon the thinking of our founders, in his classic work, The Spirit of the Laws:
“The revenues of the state are a portion each citizen gives of his goods in order to have the security or the comfortable enjoyment of the rest.
In order to fix these revenues well one must consider both the necessities of the state and the necessities of the citizens. One must not take from the real needs of the people for the imaginary needs of the state.
Imaginary needs are the ones sought by the passions and weaknesses of those who govern, the charm of an extraordinary project, the sick envy of vainglory, and a certain impotence of spirit in the face of their fancies. Often those who, with restless spirit, were at the head of public business under a prince have thought that the needs of their small souls were the needs of the state.
There is nothing that wisdom and prudence should regulate more than the portion taken away from the subjects and the portion left to them” (Part II, Book 13, Chapter 1) [emphasis added].
Notice if you will that he establishes the point I made in the previous post of this series, namely that each citizen should contribute something to the maintenance of the government, as every citizen benefits from the security, freedom and liberties provided by it. Next, he points out that the state should not take money from the people, thus denying them both the right and the means by which to care for their needs themselves, to fund what those in power deem to be the needs of the government but which are in reality not within the purview of government at all. Third, he touches on the notion that all of our personal wants and needs are not necessarily those of the state, i.e., “those who, with restless spirit,…have thought that the needs of their small souls were the needs of the state.” In this one short statement Montesquieu rips out the underpinnings of our modern-day welfare state! Finally, he sums up what we see today so sorely lacking in our Congress and Administration, the wisdom and prudence regulating the approach that those in power are to use in their levying of taxes upon us.
Our current system of taxation clearly indicates that today, according to James Madison, we do not have a just government. In defining the political meaning of “property”, its relation to individuals, and a government’s responsibility and limitation towards it, he wrote:
“In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage….In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions….
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own….
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest….
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called….
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species:….
If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments” (published in the National Gazette, March 29, 1792) [emphasis added].
So what say you? Are you of the opinion that our central government looks upon your “property” as something that belongs to you and has therefore as its responsibility to protect from seizure, or that it looks upon your “property” as belonging to it and its right to seize your “property” at will, according to its desires, and to distribute to whomever and for whatever reason it deems “good” (remember Obama’s frequent reference to his intention to “spread the wealth around”, i.e., your wealth taken from you and spread around to others who never worked for it)? Would our government today pass the “just government” test as outlined by Madison in the preceding statements? I feel my question bears no need of a spoken answer.
Having established the obvious regarding the failure of the central government to protect our properties, we should return to the question at hand, namely, for what legitimate purposes should the government be allowed to levy taxes upon us and to what extent. I addressed the extent to which taxes are to be collected in last week’s post, but I will, for summary, repeat the quote I gave from Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws:
“Public revenues must not be measured by what the people can give but by what they should give, and if they are measured by what the people can give, it must at least be by what they can always give” (Part II, Book 13, Chapter 1) [emphasis added].
The purpose for these taxes that we as citizens should (in Montesquieu’s words) willingly and cheerfully forward to the central authorities are not the “imaginary needs” (Montesquieu’s words again) that congress and presidents envision for their own aggrandizement, but only those that are authorized by our Constitution ─ specifically those enumerated powers outlined in Section I, Article 8. As you read down this list you will be struck by the thought that today we have many, many more objects of government expenditure than what is contained in that constitutional list. So how is it that our government spends so much more on things apparently not authorized, which in turn requires more in taxes for these imagined expenditures than what we should be obligated to pay? The answer is found, according to Alexander Hamilton’s argument in The Federalist No. 33, in the last part of that portion of the Constitution, namely the so-called “necessary and proper” clause:
“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Regarding this statement in the Constitution and its application Hamilton argued
“What is the power of laying and collecting taxes but a legislative power, or a power of making laws to lay and collect taxes? What are the proper means of executing such a power but necessary and proper laws?”
The obvious question then becomes, Who is to decide what is “proper and necessary”?, to which Hamilton went on in this issue of The Federalist Papers to answer
“But it may again be asked, Who is to judge of the necessity and propriety of the laws to be passed for executing the powers of the Union?” (and by extension, from his previous statement, the judge of what taxes and how much are to be levied upon the citizenry) “…I answer in the second place that the national government, like every other, must judge, in the first instance, of the proper exercise of its powers, and its constituents in the last. If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed,” [i.e., the Constitution] “and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.”
So there you have it my fellow citizens ─ it is the government itself that can determine what is “necessary and proper”, and our only redress is to point the Congress back to the Constitution and assert that it has overstepped its bounds. Now, how many of you truly believe that this is an effective means of correcting our oppressive tax burden, brought about by extravagant, reckless and unconstitutional spending by our legislature? No, I don’t believe so either! We the people have reached the unfortunate point in time where those in our present Congress have become too entrenched in their lauded positions of prestige and power to respond to our voices.
What is most striking, however, is that Hamilton’s co-Federalist, James Madison, appeared not to view this clause to grant as broad of latitude in power as Hamilton did in his essay. I would commend for your reading Federalist Papers numbers 41 – 45, written by Madison, on the powers of the proposed federal government. In Federalist No. 44 Madison addressed this issue of Congress exceeding its authority (which would include its power to lay and collect taxes):
“If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them;…in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers. The truth is that this ultimate redress may be more confided in against unconstitutional acts of the federal than of the State legislatures, for this plain reason that as every such act of the former will be an invasion of the rights of the latter, these will be ever ready to make the innovation, to sound the alarm to the people, and to exert their local influence in effecting a change of federal representatives.“
Here at least we see the proposed solution by Madison to the situation we find ourselves in today ─ the casting out of those “tenured” representatives who have lost touch with us, the people, and electing in their stead men and women who will be faithful to the original intent of the founders as expressed in our Constitution. The other half of the solution is a return to the federalist structure of the Congress by repealing the seventeenth amendment so that senators are once again appointed by and therefore answerable to the state legislatures, who will then also act as watchmen against federal encroachment upon their authority as well as the freedom and liberties of their citizens. (See my previous essays on Term Limits and the Senate and the Seventeenth Amendment.)
You may feel by this point that aside from referencing the enumerated powers in Section I, Article 8 of the Constitution, I have yet to address the original question for what exactly may the government collect taxes? Allow me to present to you the answer provided by Madison in The Federalist No. 45:
“It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union.”
If left at this point it would appear as though Madison was stating the same thing as Hamilton did in Federalist 33 ─ that anything deemed by the government to be for the public good would qualify as a legitimate pursuit of the government, funded though its power of taxation, to whatever degree and amount necessary to the attainment of that end. Fortunately, Madison did not leave the issue there, but went on in this essay to state that
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States” [emphasis added].
Based upon this, then, does it appear to you that the central politburo of our current government has adhered to these guidelines, or has it overstepped these limits, as expounded by one who was the lead author of the Constitution, and taken over what he said was to be within the purview of the State governments? As in previous questions, no answer need be given to this one either; the answer is readily apparent.
Of these dangers the Anti-Federalists gave warning over and over again. One such author, Melancton Smith, wrote on June 23, 1788:
“Our duty is to frame a government friendly to liberty and the rights of mankind, which will tend to cherish and cultivate a love of liberty among our citizens. If this government becomes oppressive it will be by degrees: It will aim at its end by disseminating sentiments of government opposite to republicanism; and proceed from step to step in depriving the people of a share in the government….But now it is proposed…to remove all barriers; to give the New Government free access to our pockets, and ample command of our persons;” [emphasis added].
Perhaps the most succinct and clarion warning penned by an Anti-Federalist about the condition in which we find ourselves today was penned by none other than Robert Yates, the brilliant judge from New York who wrote under the pseudonym “Brutus”. I will close with his words, written on October 18, 1787, which I shall use as the springboard into next week’s post on our most onerous form of taxation, that of the income tax.
“It” [i.e., the federal government] “has authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given. The legislative power is competent to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises ─ there is no limitation to this power, unless it be said that the clause which directs the use to which those taxes, and duties shall be applied, may be said to be a limitation: but this is no restriction of the power at all, for by the clause they are to be applied to pay the debts and provide for the common defence, and they only are to determine what is for the general welfare; this power therefore is neither more nor less, than a power to lay and collect taxes, imposts, and excises, at their pleasure; not only is the power to lay taxes unlimited, as to the amount they may require, but it is perfect and absolute to raise them in any mode they please….It is proper here to remark, that the authority to lay and collect taxes is the most important of any power that can be granted; it connects with it almost all other powers, or at least will in process of time draw all other after it; it is the great means of protection, security, and defence, in a good government, and the great engine of oppression and tyranny in a bad one” [emphasis added].
- Epaminondas
