How the Commerce Clause and other constitutional provisions have been stretched far beyond their original meaning to dramatically expand federal power at the expense of the states.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power 'To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.' This was intended to prevent the states from erecting trade barriers against one another — not to give Congress unlimited regulatory power over all economic activity.
In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Chief Justice Marshall gave a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause, but still recognized that purely intrastate commerce was beyond Congress's reach. The states retained significant regulatory authority over commerce within their borders.
The New Deal era saw a dramatic expansion of federal power under the Commerce Clause. In cases like NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel (1937), the Supreme Court upheld federal regulation of manufacturing — an activity that the Founders would never have considered 'commerce among the several states.'
By the time of Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Court held that a farmer growing wheat for his own consumption was engaged in 'interstate commerce' because his decision not to buy wheat affected the national wheat market. This was a breathtaking expansion of federal power.
The General Welfare Clause has been similarly stretched. Hamilton argued that Congress could spend money for any purpose that promoted the general welfare. Jefferson and Madison argued that this would give Congress unlimited power — that the specific enumeration of powers in Article I would be meaningless if Congress could do anything it deemed to be for the general welfare.
The result of these expansive interpretations has been the creation of a federal government of virtually unlimited power — the very thing the Founders feared most. The constitutional design of limited, enumerated powers has been effectively abandoned through judicial interpretation.
To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.