-- James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, fourth U.S. President
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
-- Thomas Jefferson, third U.S. President
“Mr. Speaker: I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”
-- Congressman Davy Crockett
“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.”
-- President Franklin Pierce