Rob Bishop: “Let me try and hit, for just one moment, two potential areas to address that particular question, and it goes back to…”

“Let me try and hit, for just one moment, two potential areas to address that particular question, and it goes back to the fact that we did read the Constitution on the floor today. You know it's amazing, as P.J. O'Rourke once said, that the Constitution is 16 pages, which is the operator's manual for 300 million people. The operator's manual for the Toyota Camry, in contrast, is four times as large, and it only seats five. But you also contrast that with what we have done in the lame duck session when the Senate's omnibus spending bill, it's not 16 pages, it was 1,924 pages. Those are the kinds of issues we're talking about. And I think if we really want an answer of how we make those decisions, we go back to the document that was read this morning. The general welfare clause today usually puts the emphasis on the word 'welfare.' When they wrote that thing, they put the emphasis on the word 'general.' What the Federal Government should do is that which affects all of us. Monroe, Madison, Jackson vetoed road projects because they said those road projects didn't meet the general welfare. When Savannah burned to the ground, Congress had a great deal of empathy for Savannah, but it did not actually appropriate any money for Savannah because they said giving money to Savannah to rebuild would simply help Savannah and was not general welfare.”