general welfare of the United States. Each contention
has had the support of those whose views are entitled to weight. This
court had noticed the question, but has never found it necessary to
decide which is the true construction. Justice Story, in his
Commentaries, espouses the Hamiltonian position. We shall not review the
writings of public men and commentators or discuss the legislative
practice. Study of all these leads us to conclude that the reading
advocated by Justice Story is the correct one. While, therefore, the
power to tax is not unlimited, its confines are set in the clause which
confers it, and not in those of Sec. 8 which bestow and define the
legislative powers of the Congress. It results that the power of
Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes
is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the
Constitution."[288]

The Security Act Cases

Although holding that the spending power is not limited by the specific
grants of power contained in article I, section 8, the Court found,
nevertheless, that it was qualified by the Tenth Amendment, and on this
ground ruled in the Butler case that Congress could not use moneys
raised by taxation to "purchase compliance" with regulations "of matters
of State concern with respect to which Congress has no authority to
interfere."[289] Within little more than a year this decision was
reduced to narrow proportions by Steward Machine Co. _v._ Davis,[290]
which sustained the tax imposed on employers to provide unemployment
benefits, and the credit allowed for similar taxes paid to a State. To
the argument that the tax and credit in combination were "weapons of
coercion, destroying or impairing the autonomy of the States," the Court
replied that relief of unemployment was a legitimate object of federal
expenditure under the "general welfare" clause; that the Social Security
Act represented a legitimate attempt to solve the problem by the
cooperation of State and Federal Governments; that the credit allowed
for State taxes bore a reasonable relation "to the fiscal need subserved
by the tax in its normal operation,"[291] since State unemployment
compensation payments would relieve the burden for direct relief borne
by the national treasury. The Court reserved judgment as to the validity
of a tax "if it is laid upon the condition that a State may escape its
operation through the adoption of a statute unrelated in subject matt