Founding Fathers Disagreed With Entitlement Programs and Massive Debt

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." -- Thomas Jefferson

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” -- Benjamin Franklin

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” -- Thomas Jefferson

“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” -- Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821.

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.” -- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

“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.” -- James Madison, in a letter to James Robertson

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” -- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” -- James Madison

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” -- James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” -- James Madison, Federalist No. 58, February 20, 1788

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” -- James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The Founding Fathers supported individualism. They were educated men that had researched history in order to determine the best form of government for their new nation, and came to the conclusion that the type of system that would best stand up to the test of time, and promote liberty the longest, is a republic in which the federal government is limited to only authorities designed for the protection, and preservation, of the union. One thing they observed in their research is that it is in humanity's nature to become dependent upon the government if allowed. Once the number of people dependent upon government outnumbers the number of people that are achieving, or producing, the system begins the process of collapsing from within. Charity was expected to remain in the realm of churches and private organizations. Helping the less fortunate is a noble thing, but it is not the role of government to do so. When the government begins to offer charity, it creates a number of problems. Productivity is punished, and inactivity is rewarded, so the people begin to produce less, becoming more and more dependent upon government, and the politicians then begin to offer more entitlements in order to get votes. Receiving government entitlements then gives the government, in the eyes of the government, the right to dictate to the person the parameters of the use of that charity given, giving the government a level of control over the citizen. In the end, entitlements become slavery. The people become slaves to the government, believing that they are entitled to the gifts from the treasury, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to receive those gifts.

Thomas Jefferson argued, for these reasons, that all federal programs should sunset after nineteen years. Programs are expensive. Our current budget is overwhelmed with the incredible cost of entitlement programs. Jefferson understood the likelihood of this, and was a firm believer that it was immoral for one generation to pass along debt to the next.

In June 1813, Jefferson wrote, “We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.” Jefferson’s analogy explained that the federal government has no more right to spend money and send the bill to our posterity than it does to send the tab to another nation.

Understanding how the Founding Fathers felt about entitlement programs, and massive government debt, I imagine that the founders would be appalled by our current $14 trillion national debt.

Even more troubling to the founders, I am figuring, would be the $61 trillion financial hole our nation is in as a result of the huge unfunded obligations related to permanent entitlement programs.

The writings of the Founding Fathers suggest that they would be ardent opponents of any permanent program regardless how many members of Congress supported it, and regardless of how compassionate the intent may seem. These programs have damaged the American character of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and our nature of being a nation of achievers. Worse, entitlements have enabled Congress to burden future generations with unimaginable debt.

Cutting spending alone is not enough. Cutting federal spending must be accompanied with entitlement reforms that eventually lead, down the road, to the elimination of these sinister programs that enslave Americans, and destroys the desire to fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If these programs of entitlement are in fact important enough, then the States, without federal funding, are authorized by the Constitution to have their own programs. It is not wise for the States to do so, but at least at that level entitlement programs are legal. Entitlements from the federal government are both unconstitutional, and illegal, without the authority of a Constitutional Amendment, accompanied by the ratification of 3/4 of the States, to authorize them.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary