By Bruce Walker
Donald Trump gave a silly and meandering answer when asked about the role of the federal government, and he has drawn a lot of justifiable scorn from conservative pundits about his remarks. But in a broader sense, no one running for the White House in either major party seems able (or, more likely, willing) to say what the role of the federal government should be in America.
The Constitution is pretty plain: all the powers the federal government has are articulated as legislative power in Article I, Section 8, and the role defined in Article I is very small. Basically, this is what the federal government is supposed to do: conduct diplomacy, trade, and national defense; create systems for naturalization; insure that money is sound and sovereign debt is honored; protecting intellectual property; and regulate the postal service, with such infrastructure as that may require.
Nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government power to manage health care or fund education or regulate private land use or bail out banks and other businesses or do almost anything that almost every candidate today is insisting he will do if elected president. This does not mean that "government" has no right to enter into these areas, but it means that state governments, which have all residual powers not granted directly to the federal government, have that power – to act or not to act.....
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