In this week’s open threads — mostly this one, also a bit here — there’s been quite a bit of discussion of the Constitutionality of the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act.
There are two senses in which we can talk about what’s “constitutional”: We can talk about how the Constitution actually has been interpreted by the Courts in present-day law, or we can talk about how we think the Constitution should be interpreted, regardless of present-day law or the history of precedent.
Ron was appealing to the first sense — how the Constitution is actually interpreted in law — when he wrote:
We’ll see. As we all know, absent a subsequent Amendment to the contrary the Constitution means what a majority of Supreme Court Justices says it means.
Put another way, Anthony Kennedy decides and the rest of us can go suck our thumbs.
Of course, that assumes the Supreme Court rules on the question at all, which it might not. The Supreme Court doesn’t have to step in to resolve conflicting rulings until the Appeals courts have ruled, and if all the Appeals court rulings agree with each other, the Court doesn’t have to step in at all. (Although they could if they wanted to.)1
But that’s boring old political reality. It’s a lot more fun to talk about how we should interpret the Constitution. The argument in comments has been over the scope of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution which gives Congress the ability to lay and collect taxes, to “provide for the common Defence and the general Welfare of the United States,” to “regulate Commerce… among the several States,” and to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”
G&W replied:
From a pure legal standpoint, it seems fairly likely that congress could raise federal taxes and then provide health care. The government can provide as it feels necessary for the general welfare.[…]
Though there may not be much practical difference at all, from a pure legal standpoint there seems to be a pretty big difference between the above and a situation in which the government keeps taxes the same and requires you to buy health care.
What G&W is saying, if I’m following his argument correctly (it’s hard to say, since his argument was by assertion) is that the Constitution only authorizes for Congress to “provide” in the narrow sense. But that ignores the “necessary and proper” clause; Congress can “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”
Criticizing Judge Vinson’s decision against the ACA, Akhil Reed Amar wrote:
Strictly speaking, Obamacare does not mandate the purchase of insurance. It says that those who remain uninsured must pay a tax. Vinson says this mandate cannot be upheld under Congress’ sweeping tax powers. Wrong again. A basic purpose of the founders was to create sweeping federal tax power, power that was emphatically reinforced by the 1913 Income Tax Amendment.
If Congress can tax me, and can use my tax dollars to buy a health insurance policy for me, why can’t it tell me to get a policy myself (or pay extra taxes)? Vinson offers no cogent answer to this basic logical point.
Some conservatives would respond by saying that the Necessary and Proper clause doesn’t give Congress the ability to act in any way not expressly listed in Article 1, Section 8. But if that’s the case, then what does the Necessary and Proper clause mean at all? As conservative legal scholar Orin Kerr writes:
The point of the Necessary and Proper clause is that it grants Congress the power to use means outside the enumerated list of of Article I powers to achieve the ends listed in Article I. If you say, as a matter of “logic” or otherwise, that the Necessary and Proper Clause only permits Congress to regulate using means that are themselves covered by the Commerce Clause, then the Necessary and Proper Clause is rendered a nullity. But that’s not how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Clause, from Chief Justice Marshall onwards. Indeed, as far as I know, not even the most vociferous critics of the mandate have suggested that the Necessary and Proper Clause can be read this way.
Bradon Berg went original intent on my ass, quoting James Madison. Ron goes there as well, arguing that “the Constitution’s whole purpose was to limit the powers of the Federal government.”
Both Brandon and Ron are wrong. If the Constitution’s whole purpose was to limit the power of the Federal government, then there would have been no reason to write the Constitution at all; the Articles of Confederation already provided for an extremely weak central government. The purpose of replacing the Articles with the Constitution was to remedy that flaw, not to repeat it.
The tenth amendment to the Constitution says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
On August 18, 1789, when writing the tenth amendment,2 the founders explicitly argued over the very question Brandon, Ron and I are now discussing: Is Congress narrowly limited to the powers expressly described in the constitution, or not?
Mr. Tucker proposed to amend the proposition […] to add the word “expressly,” so as to read “the powers not expressly delegated by this Constitution.”
Mr. Madison objected to this amendment, because it was impossible to confine a Government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the Constitution descended to recount every minutia. […] Mr. Sherman coincided with Mr. Madison in opinion, observing that corporate bodies are supposed to possess all powers incident to a corporate capacity, without being absolutely expressed. […]
Mr. Tucker’s motion being negatived…
And then, on the 21st, they argued about it again:
…Mr. Gerry proposed to amend by inserting the word “expressly,” so as to read “the powers not expressly delegated by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” As he thought this an amendment of great importance, he requested the yeas and nays might be taken.
17 voted for “expressly,” and 32 voted to leave it out. This question — does Congress have implicit powers, or only those powers expressly described in the Constitution — was settled by the Founders themselves in 1789.
So what about the Commerce clause? The best guide we have to the Founder’s intentions is the instructions they gave to the committee that wrote the language of the Commerce clause.
That the national legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the legislative rights vested in Congress by the confederation; and moreover to legislate in all cases, to which the separate States are incompetent; or in which the harmony of the united States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation.
That language — unanimously agreed to — indicates, quite simply, that Congress can deal with those matters that can’t be dealt with by “the separate States.” This language was then sent to the Founding equivalent of the markup committee. Andrew Kopppelman takes up the story:
This was then translated by the Committee of Detail into the present enumeration of powers in Article I, which was accepted as a functional equivalent by the Convention without much discussion. It includes the commerce and “necessary and proper” provisions.
Did the Committee of Detail botch its job, limiting Congressional power more than the Convention intended, and creating a regime in which Congress could not legislate in cases the separate states were incompetent to address? Did the Convention not notice the radical change? No. This language was accepted without objection for good reasons. […]
If health care markets involve such effects or problems, then the mandate presents a very easy case. This is not a recipe for unlimited power: grandstanding statutes that horn in on matters that are purely local, such as the federal ban on possession of handguns near schools that the Supreme Court struck down in 1995, exceeds the commerce power. But the national health care insurance market is not a purely local matter.
We might also turn to John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the United States, and a Founding Father as well. In 1824, discussing the Commerce clause, Marshall wrote:
What is this power? It is the power to regulate, that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution. These are expressed in plain terms and do not affect the questions which arise in this case, or which have been discussed at the bar. […]
The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections are, in this as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied to secure them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely in all representative governments.
Marshall wasn’t discussing health care, but the broad principles he described were clear, and apply today.
It’s clear that Ron and Brandon — and, probably, Robert — had they been in the room in 1789, would have voted to add “expressly” to the 10th Amendment. They would have disagreed with James Madison when he argued that “it was impossible to confine a Government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication.”
But the Founders considered this question, and decided not to limit Congress in that way. And the Necessary and Proper clause is in the Constitution, and — much to the chagrin of anti-government conservatives — actually has meaning.
As Brandon said in the previous thread, if people don’t like the Constitution, then they should amend it, not ignore it. If you want the Constitution to forbid Congress all powers not expressly given to it — then amend the Constitution and add the word “expressly.” If you want the Necessary and Proper clause to be null and void, then amend the Constitution and strike it out.
But what Ron and Brandon have been doing, in effect, is arguing that we should read the Constitution as if the Founders hadn’t specifically voted not to put the word “expressly” in; that we should read the Constitution as if the Necessary and Proper clause doesn’t mean anything at all. They’re in effect trying to amend the Constitution by ignoring what it actually says.
Contrary to what too many right-wingers claim, the Constitution is not an anti-government manifesto. The plain words of the Constitution give Congress the power to regulate all sorts of interstate commerce, and to use means that are necessary and proper to achieve that end. That includes, in this case, the power to create an individual mandate.
Well, unless Anthony Kennedy disagrees. In that case, never mind.
* * *
Some additional links on the subject, most but not all of which I agree with:
- Mandates and the constitution: The commerce clause and health reform
- Former Reagan Solicitor General: I’m “Quite Sure” The Health Care Law Is Constitutional
- The Volokh Conspiracy: Lots and Lots of Posts About Health Care (They mostly disagree with me, but many of them are really smart nonetheless.)
- Stop Talking About Broccoli
- Doomed to Repeat History (regarding conservatives and the Tenth Amendment)
- Tribe on SCOTUS and the PPACA
- Health Care Reform And The Misinterpretation Of The Commerce Clause
- Commerce (law review article by Jack Balkin, pdf file, about 50 pages).
- Standing Up For Limits On The Commerce Clause (I recommend reading not only the main article — by one of the best conservative bloggers out there — but also the comments, particularly the responses by Noah Millman and by Patrick. There’s also a funny/embarrassing exchange regarding the paper the British Constitution is written on.)
- My prediction is that if the ACA is found unconstitutional by the Supremes, it will be by a 5/4 vote; but if it’s found Constitutional by the Supremes, it will be by a vote of 7/2 or 8/1 (the one being Thomas). If conservatives on the Court lack the votes to win, then they have little incentive to vote against their own past rulings. [↩]
- Which was the ninth amendment at the time. [↩]
At that point, why are you bothering to call it a constitutional discussion? If you ignore present-day law and if you ignore the USSC (both of which are rooted in the constitution and which are highly relevant to real outcomes) then it seems extremely strange to arbitrarily set constitutional limits on the discussion. At that point you may as well return to general political theory. Which is interesting and all that, but which is not really the same discussion.
Or, to put it differently:
You can see what the “plain words” mean, and so can I. Unfortunately for both of us, a variety of other people strongly disagree about what the “plain meaning” is, and I daresay that you and I probably have at least some disagreement.
then what?
Well, one can take the position that the meaning is “plain” or “obvious” even though the status as “obvious” seems to be contradicted by the multitudes of folk who disagree about the meaning. (This happens a lot in religion and Biblical interpretation. Since it’s difficult to reconcile contradictory interpretations of “obvious” things and intelligent rationality, it’s also known as the “everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot” stance.)
Or, one can acknowledge the position that the meaning isn’t plain. Which–as it happens–is also pretty well supported in law. And which is, by inference, probably applicable to the constitution.
I can’t tell you how many contracts I’ve seen where two perfectly intelligent people, acting in complete good faith, believed that they were in agreement but turned out to have entirely different opinions on what a contract said. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people deliberately agree to terms which are imperfectly defined, with the hopes of using that flexibility as a strategic advantage.
The longer and more complex a contract becomes, the more likely it is that people will have either accidental or strategic disagreements about the meaning of a term or phrase. The more signatories to a contract, the more likely it is that people will have either accidental or strategic disagreements about the meaning of a term or phrase.
The constitution is, is a contract of sorts–albeit an unusually complex one, with a very high number of signatories.
All of the signatories were intelligent and well-educated; many were lawyers. What possible justification is there to assume that the multitude of founders (each of who had equivalent standing as signatories) were a Unimind, without any disputes?
This is an interesting argument (regarding the debate over the term “expressly”), but I am not persuaded that it proves your point. I think you would run into a conflict between “necessary and proper” if you also had the word “expressly” included in the 10th Amendment. But, I can concede that there are implicit powers in the constitution without agreeing that the individual mandate is constitutional.
My question would be similar to that of the Judge Vinson (and I have only seen or heard excerpts of his decision): if the Feds can do this, what CAN’T they do? Are the LIMITS of the Government’s power only those limits expressly enumerated?
And, I do have to quibble with you a bit about characterizing some as saying the constitution is an “anti-government” document. That may be what people have said and it may have even been what they meant, but it seems a bit of a strawman.
I would look at it as “anti-government” in the sense of “limited government.” It is true that the Articles of Confederation were too loose and the Constitution was needed to for “a more perfect Union.” So, it was intended to be stronger. However, throughout the document, you see a HUGE balancing act. In many ways, it is anti-majoritarian (e.g. overriding vetoes, amending the Constitution, the electoral college, etc.); it has numerous checks and balances between the various branches; it has a federalist balance between the central government and the state government; and it has a balance between the states (the Senate) and the citizens (the House) (although that has been eroded a bit (read: a lot) by the 17th Amendment). It is the federalist aspect that is most critical when looking at the Constitution as “anti-government.”
Part of the rationale for the federalist system is that there would be tension between the state and federal level; the individual citizen would be more free if power were divided between two different bodies. Now, it seems that the state and federal governments have now double-teamed the individual. Now, we send tax money to Washington to pay for welfare, and we send money to the state for the same thing. Both governments get money for schools, roads, law enforcement, etc.
My question to those who support the ACA (just as one example of numerous other federal laws that could be mentioned): why do we need state governments anymore? Why don’t we simply have a national government? If we want the laws to be the same throughtout the country (e.g. age limits on alcohol, speed limits, Roe v. Wade, sodomy, death penalty, gay marriage, marijuana and other drug use, etc.), why don’t we simply scrap the whole system and get rid of the state governments? What are they good for?
-Jut
G&W, I admit that I was trying to throw some of the originalist rhetoric back at the originalists (especially my use of the word “plain”), and got a bit carried away towards the end there. I agree with what you’ve written in comment #2, especially the final sentence.
(That said, I do think it’s fair to refer to what “the Founders” decided when we’re talking about a specific question that they specifically discussed and voted on. Voting is how groups “decide” on things without having to have a unimind.)
Jut, there are many reasons to want state governments — some of which are part of the ACA itself. The ACA has an “opt-out” provision, allowing states to take the money that comes with the ACA but use it to run some other method of delivering coverage for basic care to that state’s residents. This could be extremely beneficial in the long run, both because the individual states may come up with things that better suit their citizens, and because it may lead to some innovative ideas working well in one state and then spreading to other states.
That’s a very unspecific question — by “Government,” do you mean all of Government (which would include the state governments as well); do you mean just the Federal Goverment; or do you mean just Congress? I assume you mean just the Federal Congress when you say “the Feds,” but I’m not sure.
As Justice Marshall said, in a representative government, the primary limit is — and will always be — the representatives’ “identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections.” It’s naive to think that anything else really matters, in the long run. To use an example from Noah Millman, the Soviet Union had a written constitution with many guaranteed rights, none of which mattered in practice; the UK has no written Constitution, but in practice British citizens enjoy many rights and freedoms.
If the courts, the representatives, and (most of) the people are all pretty much in accord on ignoring one of the limits written in the Constitution, then that limit will be ignored. See, for instance, the idea in the Constitution that only Congress has the power to declare war; in actual practice, that requirement is now null and void, and the President decides to go to war or not.
To use another example, at this time Congress doesn’t have the power to decide that “marriage” in every state must include same-sex marriage; if they tried, both the Courts and the people would crush their effort to do so. But it’s conceivable that 50 years from now Congress might have that power, in effect, if no one objects to it at that time.
That said, when we’re not all in accord, then the limits written in the Constitution do mean something in practice. So yes, there are a lot of express limits, and those matter. Congress can’t pass a law saying that the First Amendment is null and void, for instance.
And there are a lot of implicit limits, too — according to the Commerce clause (and as the Supreme Court has ruled twice), Congress has no direct power over many strictly local matters. Although Congress can (I believe) create a individual mandate as part of a larger system of regulating health insurance nationwide, I don’t believe that Congress could have created a stand-alone individual mandate.
Plus, there are the limits of checks and balances. Congress can’t override the President without a supermajority; Congress can’t override the Supreme Court on Constitutional issues except by amending the Constitution (which can’t be done without the states).
By definition, if it’s what people have said and what they meant, then responding to it is not a strawman argument. I admit that I was exaggerating a little, however, and should have said “anti Federal government” rather than “anti government.” I don’t think my meaning was unclear in the context of the entire post, however.
I think the Constitution was intended to (among other things) create a central government that was able to govern effectively where a national government is required, but which would leave local issues to the individual states. Contrary to what Conservatives sometimes say, no one is arguing in favor of an all-powerful central government.
I agree there are many reasons to want state governments (“laboratories of democracy” and all that) and that is why I would prefer fewer federal laws, not just opt-outs. However, any talk like this gets one tarred as a “states rights racist.” There is very little tolerance on the left for any notion of “states rights,” even when the issue has nothing to do with race.
Yes, imprecision reigns! “Feds” and “Government” were used interchangeably to mean “Federal Government.” The point being: for such a long time, the Federal Government was seen as a “limited government with enumerated powers.” If the individual mandate is upheld, it would become an “unlimited government with enumerated restrictions,” such as the First Amendment, as you mention. The trick is to define any limit on the Federal Government without referencing a restriction in the Constitution. It used to be that the area of Family Law was considered to be the province of the state government because it is not mentioned in the Constitution; the same held true for criminal laws (except the ones specifically mentioned in the Constitution). Now, where is that limit?
Yes, and that should concern us. The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance. If we are to live according to principles, we should insist on declarations of war, etc. Otherwise, we are hardly a “nation of laws.” The Tea Partiers, at least some of them, are trying to get back to the notion that the Constitution MEANS something and the Government is not free to ignore it because the Constitution is the means by which the Government has any power over us in the first place. If you abuse the power we have given, or ignore its restrictions, we have the right to take it back.
Regarding the “strawman,” I only meant that it would be unfair to characterize the pro-choice movement, for example, as “abortion on demand up until the moment of birth” just because there may be a small minority in the group that may think that. Similarly, there may be some in the Tea Party who would say all taxes are evil and the Government should be de-funded, etc. I look at that as a bit of a strawman, simply because those are the extremes and not really representative of the broader position that “taxes are evil, but necessary for a government that should be limited to its enumerated tasks.” When you said too many right-wingers claim that the Constitution is anti-government, it was not clear who you were lumping together, because “anti-government” sounds anarchist, whereas, in my experience, I have understood that phrase to mean “limited.”
Fair enough (that may be a similar sort of “strawman”), but the problem is that there is no way to discern what is or is not permitted. The conservatives would argue that, as power becomes more centralized, there is no way to tell what the Government can’t do. Otherwise, we suffer “death by a thousand paper cuts,” as the Government makes you buy health insurance, outlaws certain light bulbs that you can use, or makes you eat asparagus every day. Whether Liberals want it or not, any limits to the power of the Federal Government seem to be disappearing. Many Conservatives are coming to the conclusion that the only way to guarantee that the Federal Government does not become an all-powerful central government is to scale it back to one of enumerated powers; otherwise, it may end up doing anything (except those things expressly proscribed).
-Jut
It may amuse you, then, to know that my reply was basically cut and pasted from an argument I had with an originalist. His position was basically “it’s clear because it’s clear because it’s clear.” He was a doof.
You’re much more interesting to argue with than he was.
Sure…. sorta.
See, it’s the same contract issue I raised above. When two parties “agree” on a contract, it seems simple. But what happens when they each had a different intent of the contract, and each thought that the other party shared their intent? What happens if they each knew the contract was unclear, and intended to take account of it later?
Did the drafters of the CA constitution intend to be vague regarding which amendments would require a 50% vote? Did they intend to push that decision onto the then-current CA courts? Did some (or all) of the drafters believe that the language was crystal clear? Etc.
And, of course: Should a drafter’s intent matter, anyway? Should we care what Madison wrote; why should we even try to look outside the bounds of the document? Given that his writings didn’t make it into the Constitution–we can assume that a solely-Madison-drafted Constitution would not look the same–why should his opinions be more relevant than those who didn’t leave behind papers?
I see and hear a lot of arguments about this, but in my mind they all resolve to the same issue: Who has the job of deciding what ___ means; who has the job of deciding what is relevant? And the only answer which makes any sense is “the Supreme Court, subject to Constitutional amendment to remove its power.”
No matter what the constitutional argument is, eventually we reach a need for means to resolve that agreement. And the only means provided for at all in the constitution (not to mention the only means that most people can agree on) is the USSC.
Textualists try to obscure that. But it doesn’t work there, either.
As a textualist example, “this is the plain meaning because it was in a dictionary of the time” seems to make sense. That’s where they like to rest their laurels.
But of course the textualist position simply leads to the next set of questions: How do they know which dictionary to use? How do they know that the dictionary is right? How do we know that the drafters relied on the meaning in that dictionary? How do we decide that the proper mode of investigation is to rely on a dictionary definition as a means of resolving disputes?
And once you get those questions, you end up back at stage 1: “Who has the job of deciding what ___ means; who has the job of deciding what is relevant?”
You, yourself have an interesting counter point here .
The Constitution is about balancing all sorts of different things against each other. Interpreting the power to regulate interstate commerce as the power to regulate all commerce, and including the choice not to buy things just doesn’t seem well balanced. I’m not sure we should encourage such things.
I’m also surprised that progressives seem to be so willing to attest to the rightness of the Supreme Court’s view in Comstock. Holding people beyond their prison sentences because prosecutors can find a court willing to rule that they are sexually dangerous strikes me as well a precedent fraught with all sorts of problems to people who know anything about a) treatment of prisoners, b) race and ‘dangerous’ diagnosis in prison psychiatric treatment, c) how our prison system railroads even innocent people. Comstock is a huge step beyond all sorts of previous ways of dealing with things, and is frankly a bit scary. Embracing that super broad view of the necessary and proper clause just because it seems like a good tool for the health care debate opens the door to all sorts of mischief. (Necessary and proper torture anyone?)
The thing that irks me most about the whole thing is that there are a host of non boundary pushing ways that the mandate could have been dealt with, but that we had to choose the boundary pushing one. I don’t think that is good policy.
The thing that irks me most about the whole thing is that there are a host of non boundary pushing ways that the mandate could have been dealt with, but that we had to choose the boundary pushing one. I don’t think that is good policy.
They don’t invite me to strategy meetings in the West Wing these days, but I’d bet Amp’s life that the thinking was “many Republicans have endorsed an individual mandate and a Republican governor even set one up in his state, so this is the mechanism that we can get away with using, politically.” I don’t think they even considered a Constitutional challenge; Nancy Pelosi’s “are you serious??” response to questions about Constitutionality wasn’t feigned.
What they didn’t anticipate was (a) that establishment Republicans were going to obstruct Obama’s initiatives no matter what they were, and (b) the surging Tea Party movement was going to change the tone of what Republicans would ideologically endorse, along with replacing many of those establishment Republicans. Out in the states, it’s Tea Party conservatives pushing and energizing the legal challenges by attorneys general, as well as legally silly (but politically less silly) nullification efforts.
I’m aware of that. The Constitution was written to create a stronger central government than the one specified in the Articles of Confederation. However, that’s not saying much. The goal was to remedy specific weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, not to create a federal government with the virtually unlimited powers it has today.
The record of this debate is vague enough that, depending on what details were omitted, it could in theory support either your interpretation or mine. It’s likely that the committee discussed several examples in order to clarify exactly what they expected to be ruled out by the insertion of “expressly,” but as there is apparently no record of this, we really have no way of knowing exactly what was intended by omitting the word “expressly.”
My guess, given that Madison explicitly disavowed, even ridiculed, your interpretation elsewhere, is that he was trying to prevent excessive literalism, perhaps of the sort Charles alluded to with the bit about the Air Force.
Of course. This is fully consistent with my interpretation. Arguably much more so than with yours, as you would grant to Congress many powers not described above.
Marshall was discussing the case of a state overstepping its constitutional bounds and passing a law that interfered with commerce between the states. That it follows from this that the federal government has the power to regulate things that not only aren’t interstate commerce, but aren’t interstate anything is a bit of a leap.
Also, I am in general skeptical of things that the framers said about the meaning of the Constitution after its ratification. If after the ninth state had ratified, Madison had said, anachronistically, “That bit about general welfare means I get to be king for life, SUCKERS!!1” then people would have called BS, and rightly so. No less so with more subtle revisionism.
What matters isn’t what the framers personally believed, but rather how they sold the Constitution to the states. Ultimately the authority to ratify or reject the Constitution rested with the states, and the original intent that really matters is their intent in ratifying it. That’s why the Federalist Papers are so significant—they were the arguments that Madison, Jay, and Hamilton put forth for ratifying.
It’s clear from the bit that I excerpted in my original comment that the tax and spending clause does not grant Congress blanket power to do anything it claims promotes the geveral welfare of the United States, and, by the same logic, that the interstate commerce clause does not grant Congress blanket power to regulate anything that could conceivably affect commerce between the states, because that is, quite literally, everything.
So where do you think those limits lie?
Is there anything which you personally would like Congress to do which you believe is not within the limits of Congress’s constitutionally authorized powers?