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Description: Last clause of Article I, section 8 of the United States (US) Constitution authorizing Congress to make all laws necessary and proper for exercising its enumerated powers and any other power granted by the Constitution to the national government.

The taxing and spending clause grants Congress the authority to acquire revenues to finance federal government programs, make payments to individuals, and provide grants-in-aid to states. The power to tax became controversial after the Civil War (1861-1865) when Congress imposed taxes on incomes, but the constitutionality of these taxes turned on the distinction between direct and indirect taxes. In (1881), the Court upheld a wartime income tax as an indirect excise tax, but in (1895), it found that a tax on income from property was an invalid direct tax because it was not apportioned. The Court reversed itself again in (1911), holding that a corporate income tax was an indirect excise tax on the privilege of doing business. The Sixteenth Amendment, adopted in 1913, eliminated the confusion by granting Congress the power to impose taxes on incomes from any source without having to comply with the apportionment requirement.

There have been two major interpretations of the general welfare clause, which is also called the taxing and spending clause. James Madison made a narrow construction of the clause, so that it was a summary of congressional power to tax and spend money for those purposes specifically enumerated in section 8. In contrast, Alexander Hamilton and Justice Joseph Story argued that the clause was a separate grant of power, authorizing Congress to use broad discretion in taxing and spending for the general welfare.

The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in 1870, guaranteed that citizens of the United States could not be denied their right to vote by the federal or state government on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. However, many southern states passed laws, including grandfather clauses, designed to disenfranchise African Americans through literacy tests or poll taxes.

After the Civil War (1861-1865), the Fifteenth Amendment Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the voting rights Voting rights of people of color in southern states. It expressly stated that the right to vote could not be “denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” During the period of Reconstruction Reconstruction (1863-1877), the military administration in charge of the former Confederate states enforced this prescription. When Reconstruction ended, and the civil authority of these states replaced the federal military administration, white southerners devised various methods of circumventing the Fifteenth Amendment. One of these methods was the grandfather clause. Grandfather clauses

In 1791, when advising President George Washington on the constitutionality of establishing a national bank, Thomas Jefferson and others opposed to a strong national government maintained that Congress was limited to exercising those powers expressly granted by the Constitution, for example, the power to coin money. All other powers were reserved for the states. Jefferson argued that the necessary and proper clause imposed additional limits on the powers of Congress. The clause limited any use of powers not expressly granted by the Constitution except when such powers were absolutely necessary or indispensable to the exercise of an enumerated power. A national bank, for example, was unconstitutional both because the Constitution did not expressly delegate the power to create corporations to Congress and because a bank was not an indispensable means for achieving Congress’s legitimate ends. A broader interpretation of the clause, Jefferson argued, would effectively create a national government with unlimited power.