The doctrine
Enumerated powers is the constitutional principle that the federal government possesses only the powers specifically listed in the Constitution. On The Bob Zadek Show, host Bob Zadek framed the doctrine through James Madison’s language in Federalist 45, quoting Madison’s statement that the powers delegated to the federal government are “few and defined,” in contrast with those remaining to the states, which are “numerous and indefinite.” Zadek paired that quotation with one he attributed to Representative Pete Stark, that there are “no constitutional limits” to what the federal government can do, and asked which politician should be honored. He credited Madison with writing the first draft of the Constitution and being the leading proponent of the Constitution at the Convention of 1787. A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Guest Randall Holcombe described the founders’ design as a Constitution giving the federal government limited and enumerated powers, with democratic elections serving only to determine who exercises those powers. In his account, a different vision of democracy holds that government should carry out the will of the people; a constitutional government with limited and enumerated powers, by contrast, is constrained to do only what the Constitution empowers it to do. The excerpts present these as two competing ways of looking at democracy. Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril (2019)
Andrew J. Coulson invoked the same idea in a discussion of federal education policy, describing the pre-New Deal interpretation of the General Welfare Clause as a general preamble to the specific powers granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution—a setup for the actual list of powers, the enumerated powers. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
A separate episode summary states that Bob Zadek interviewed Professor John Marini of the University of Nevada, Reno, about his book Unmasking the Administrative State, discussing a historical shift from a government of limited, enumerated powers to a centralized bureaucracy run by unelected experts, and how that evolution eroded individual autonomy and the rule of law. The “Doctor for Liberty” on Opioid Abuse, Harm Reduction, and ObamaCare (2019)
The General Welfare Clause and its reinterpretation
Coulson dated the displacement of the enumerated-powers reading to Franklin Roosevelt’s effort to secure Supreme Court approval of the New Deal. Before Roosevelt, he said, the overwhelmingly upheld interpretation treated the General Welfare Clause as a preamble; after Roosevelt, a new interpretation held sway under which the exercise of taxing and spending to promote the general welfare was itself a power—anything legislators claimed would help people was constitutional. In Coulson’s account this reinterpretation is what makes possible a federal Department of Education and laws such as No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top proposal; without it, he said, none of this would be legal and it would be overturned by the Supreme Court instantly. He described the clause as the whole justification for these laws. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
Zadek’s own framing in that conversation emphasized the accumulation of economic power in Washington and its use to impose will on local school districts. He cited Sausalito, a town of 7,000 people where citizens can react to a disliked city council action within about 48 hours, and said losing that local control breaks his heart. Coulson added that since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society education legislation the federal government has spent $1.85 trillion on education, while 17-year-old students’ performance on tests administered to nationally representative samples since 1970 has been flat, and gaps by race and income remained as wide as when the programs were enacted. End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education (2009)
The “expressly” debate and the 9th and 10th Amendments
Professor Carol Berkin described the fight over enumerated powers as turning on a single word: the Anti-Federalists in Congress, outnumbered, wanted the text to say that no power not “expressly” given to the federal government could be used. She located this fight in the 10th Amendment, which says the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states and the people. Madison and the drafters, in this account, believed Congress needed the power to make decisions as things came up and to legislate on matters not contemplated when the Constitution was written—hence implied powers and the necessary and proper clause. Carol Berkin on The Bill of Rights No One Wanted (2016)
Berkin explained the 9th Amendment as protecting unenumerated rights: the fact that the founders specified that government cannot interfere with freedom of the press or freedom to practice religion does not disparage other rights not mentioned. She said that, after 235 years, debate continues about what the amendment means. Zadek, introducing a caller’s question, said the 9th Amendment is underrated and misunderstood if not ignored, and summarized the underlying concern that Congress would take the specifically enumerated powers and, through the necessary and proper clause and other language, effect an expansion of them. Carol Berkin on The Bill of Rights No One Wanted (2016)
Immigration
Sheldon Gilbert applied the doctrine to immigration, stating that the federal government has limited and enumerated powers and that unless the Constitution spells out a particular power, Congress does not have it. He cited the scholar Ilya Somin, who walked through the enumerated powers in Article 1 and asked where the power to regulate immigration appears, finding it absent; on that argument Congress lacks the power to regulate immigration, though states such as Texas might possess it. Gilbert noted Somin’s point that it would be surprising for so immense a power to be merely implicit when the framers listed much more basic powers, such as operating post offices. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Gilbert also set out the opposing position: those who say an enumerated power exists point to clauses including the power to establish a uniform naturalization process, reasoning that if Congress can make someone a citizen it must have the lesser power to decide who may enter the country to become eligible for citizenship. He said there are a number of other clauses, but named naturalization as one of the most important. In the same discussion, Zadek noted that the Constitution had very little to say about immigration and citizenship, and that Congress became active in legislating quotas and immigration at the end of the nineteenth century, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Budget and the scope of federal power
In the episode with Matt Welch, the enumerated-powers premise served as the basis for a concrete program: Zadek said that honoring Madison’s view rather than Pete Stark’s would make balancing the budget possible without interfering with entitlements and without raising taxes, and the episode summary describes a series of proposed cuts including housing subsidies, agricultural payouts and the FCC. The summary lists enumerated powers alongside the federal budget, constitutional law, libertarianism, the Tea Party movement, the regulatory state, the Department of Agriculture, FCC and housing policy as the episode’s topics. A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Across episodes: two episodes touch the topic
The excerpts show the doctrine discussed in several episodes—A Libertarian Plan, End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education, Carol Berkin on The Bill of Rights No One Wanted, Revenge of the Pen and the Phone, Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril, and the Marini episode on the administrative state—but without a staged development from earlier to later treatment; each applies the doctrine to its own subject, from the budget to education, the Bill of Rights and immigration.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not reproduce the text of the enumerated powers in Article 1, nor do they set out the full wording of the General Welfare Clause or the 9th Amendment. No excerpt states which court decisions adopted the post-New Deal reading of the General Welfare Clause beyond Coulson’s general reference to Roosevelt’s arm-twisting of the Supreme Court. The Marini and Holcombe episodes appear here only as summaries, without the fuller exchanges the other episodes supply, and several segments end mid-sentence or at a break.