Corporate Tax Breaks and Bailouts - Are They Constitutional?

Below, verbatim, is the actual language within Article 8, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution and Congress's limited authority with respect to it's powers of duties. Granted, these powers have been unlawfully expanded and increased - particularly by the Wilson and FDR Administrations with respect to social welfare, and under subsequent administrations in corporate welfare, most egregiously by this last Bush Administration and the 700 billion dollar campaign finance fraud bailout for the banks and financial sectors. Nothing more than enforced campaign contributions for the 2008 elections at the American public's expense. Here is the actual, LIMITED powers and duties for which Congress has been assigned. These powers were so limited in order to place most legislation within the state's purview, the more local government, and thus more accountable to the people. It has been successive abridgements of the Constitution, therefore, which have brought us to where we are today, and getting progressively worse under each Administration and far less accountable to the point where the U.S. budget and dollar is no more than monopoly money with no true backing whatsoever.

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 defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States; To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

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;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Those are the specific powers granted to Congress. And per a subsequent provision, any and all powers not specifically enumerated or prohibited by our Constitution are left to the states and the people, respectively. There is no "general welfare" clause, that language is intended simply as an introduction to the "intent" of the Section and provisions contained within it. Since incorporation by any business in and of itself is a voluntary act and governed by the laws of the state in which the business is incorporated, then any "bailout" of any U.S. corporation, such as the Big 3 automakers, or the financial institutions, should have been sought through the states in which they were incorporated themselves, not at the federal level. And of course due to also the "privileges and immunities" clause barring any unequal privileges and immunities to any specific class contained in most state and the federal Constitution, then those bailouts should have beeen unilaterally denied, unless of course Congress amended the Constitution and transferred federal bankruptcy authority to Congress, rather than to the oversight of the federal judiciary.Insofar as corporate tax breaks, that is another story, since taxation per the same Section, does not have to be equal, and as the founder's envisioned, corporations as property were to be taxed in order to offset the costs of government and any regulatory powers needed over them, not the income of the private citizens. Congress has already afforded large major corporations the ability to "write off" research and development costs from their bottom line profits, in addition to also providing federal grant monies for such R&D costs - and it is their bottom line profits alone upon which they are taxed. The U.S. automakers have been given tax breaks already in order to facilitate the development of alternative energy vehicles, even though such research costs are clearly tax deductible from their profits on the sales of their existing gas powered autos. The Big Three are in trouble primary due to lack of regulation of foreign imported vehicles as in the past which are in direct competition with U.S. industry, and lack of protection of the stockholders and investors in the remuneration which is paid to high level executives who sit on the Boards determining their own salaries and severance packages. This is where Congress should place it's attention, since it is the investors and public that need to be protected, and if the Big Three were being adequately protected from competing foreign interests it would place them in the black once again, or at least competitive with those foreign imports. If an imported auto were to be tax sufficiently and the supply regulated as the founder's intended with their "protectionist" beliefs, it would encourage Americans to "buy American" once again, or if an import is what they desire, then they should have to pay extra for it. That is why Belgian chocolate is more expensive than Hershey's, yet Hershey is the largest seller of chocolate in the U.S. This strategy has been abandoned by Congress with respect to the automakers, and the American people should not have to pay for their errors nor should the Big Three executives not expect Congress to do it's Constitutional duty and place those protective measures once again for American industry in future legislation.

As far as past history, the details of that recent 700 billion bailout have been hidden from the public for one specific reason, and one reason alone. They were fraudulent bankruptcies to begin with, one involving a global international insurer to boot, over which Congress has no right to indebt the American people and their posterity for a globally based concern.The treasonous actions of the Bush Administration and the 110th Congress will live in infamy in the annals of American history, and most likely will be referred to as the genesis of the anniliation and destruction of the late, great United States of America as global reach and indebtedness contributed to the fall of that other great exercise in republican and democratic government, Rome.