That seems to be the problem. The government should not be this giant morphing entity that can consume resources depending on how large it is. It should have a set number of power and duties (constitution) and need to tax only to fund those needs. As Bosk mentioned in the thread about healthcare, part of the reason we have such a huge deficit is because the government is so inept at running social programs.
Medicare outperforms the "free-market," in terms of cost, efficiency and quality.
Taxation has been on a steady decline since the 1950's, not up
source?
Google images:
Social security has gone up, but it's size in comparison to income tax makes it's rise irrelevant to the fact that taxes have gone down.
But the founding father's not only left us a list of specific powers, but a desire on how to use those powers. One of those is promoting the general Welfare of the United States, as well as the necessary powers to do so.
Thats simply incorrect.
It's directly in the constitution. Even if someone accepts your insane argument that somehow the Constitution doesn't give Congress the power to provide for the general Welfare of the people - despite the fact that the Constitution literally says, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."
You are now literally ignoring what is written in the Constitution, not simply debating interpretation.
Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence
All of those things are tied to one of the enumerated powers. If general welfare was meant to be applied the way you say it should be, why is not one of the enumerated powers "To be do whatever is necessary to reinforce the general welfare of the populace". It only makes sense that they meant it to be applied in direct relation to the enumerated powers and not to be a fix all.
So you really want to ignore the fact that that list starts out by saying these are powers of congress? Maybe they felt "general Welfare" didn't need further description, maybe they felt such was idiotic as it says, "general Welfare" and is thus rather hard to particulate.
But to even answer your question, what of the powers listed which don't pertain to taxes, duties, imposts, excises, paying of debts or defense? There two:
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Here's two powers given which don't fit any of your criteria, but do fit the idea of "general Welfare."
My point about federal healthcare then was that the needs of the poor and unhealthy were much more vast because of the level of technology at the time. Why, if they would not have been opposed to federal healthcare per the constitution, did they not implement it? Back to my original point, why did they not implement any social programs or support any failing businesses with tax dollars?
Your first sentence doesn't actually work with what you're saying. They didn't implement it because it was entirely impractical at the time, it's infeasibility meant that there was never a debate regarding the issue. To use this as some sort of proof that the founding fathers wouldn't' support universal health care is absurd.