DN Editorial: How to read the Constitution

YESTERDAY was the first full day of business for the 112th Congress and it began with the (bipartisan!) reading aloud of the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives, something that hasn't been done for more than a century.

This was a tea-party idea and we think it was grand - if only to see House Speaker John Boehner have to read the words of the Preamble that say the Founders intended to "promote the general welfare." (More on that later.) Besides, it's much better to argue about what the Constitution means while looking at the actual document than relying on what Glenn Beck says is in it.

(There was a question of what original text would be read: Republican leaders decided not to read Article I, Section 2, in the printed Constitution, later amended, that refers to "three-fifths of all other Persons.")

The moment was powerful and affecting - in particular, seeing Rep. John Lewis, the civil-rights giant, read the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. But once the 84-minute reading ended, too many members of the new Congress - and their tea-party base - went back to their usual practice of reading only select portions of the document, touting the parts they like and ignoring the ones that are inconvenient.

So, let's extend the exercise for a few minutes longer and look at just a few things the Constitution says- and some things it doesn't say.

And what it doesn't say is a lot. For example, the word "God" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Not in the Preamble, nor the oath taken by the president (George Washington added "so help me God" on his own). It also doesn't say the word "Christian." Surely, if the Founders' original intent was to create a "Christian nation," as many conservatives insist, they would have said so.

Compared to the large, diverse country we live in, one that depends on scores of complex systems for transportation, communication, agriculture, and medical care, the Constitution is very short, shorter than the manual for your car or computer. That's because it wasn't intended to be read as a detailed set of instructions for a finished product. It is deliberately vague. The Constitution provides only a framework, of basic principles. Succeeding generations were expected to build a government on those principles that could deal with unimaginable changes and the challenges they would present.

Tea-party types seem to think the Constitution is all about limiting the power of the federal government and enshrining individual liberty and choice, but just the opposite is true: The Founders drastically expanded the powers of Congress. Which brings us, as you knew it would, to health-care reform and the "general Welfare."

Conservatives are right: the Constitution doesn't say anything about Congress having the power to make laws on health care. (It also says nothing about Social Security, food inspections or air-traffic control.) Here's what it does say, in Article I, Section 8: "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 . . . " Later in that section, Congress has the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" for carrying out that power.

You can argue, as we do, that the Affordable Care Act isn't the best way to make health care more accessible, but it's ludicrous to deny that health care plays a major role in the general Welfare, or that Congress has the power to do something about it. That is, unless you want to call out Ben Franklin and James Madison as socialists.

Maybe that's next on the House agenda. *