Is Social Security constitutional?

[memphis]

Go

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

its never been ruled unconstitutional so no.
case closed.

it is possible to claim that it is unconstitutional though,but it is legally constitutional until it is ruled unconstitutional.

[Free Palestine]

its never been ruled unconstitutional so no.
case closed.

it is possible to claim that it is unconstitutional though,but it is legally constitutional until it is ruled unconstitutional.

Something is not constitutional until ruled otherwise.  The enumerated powers of Congress are few, and limited to what is expressedly written in the Constitution.  Otherwise, we wouldn't even have a Tenth Amendment, or even an Article I, Section VIII.

[??????????]

No, it's an insurance policy which is forbidden by the Constitution.

[Torie]

Clearly - indeed so clear, that nobody has filed a suit that SCOTUS condescended to hear.

[Antonio the Sixth]

LOL to this question.

[The Mikado]

its never been ruled unconstitutional so no.
case closed.

it is possible to claim that it is unconstitutional though,but it is legally constitutional until it is ruled unconstitutional.

Something is not constitutional until ruled otherwise.  The enumerated powers of Congress are few, and limited to what is expressedly written in the Constitution.  Otherwise, we wouldn't even have a Tenth Amendment, or even an Article I, Section VIII.

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-John Marshall, 1819

[Free Palestine]

its never been ruled unconstitutional so no.
case closed.

it is possible to claim that it is unconstitutional though,but it is legally constitutional until it is ruled unconstitutional.

Something is not constitutional until ruled otherwise.  The enumerated powers of Congress are few, and limited to what is expressedly written in the Constitution.  Otherwise, we wouldn't even have a Tenth Amendment, or even an Article I, Section VIII.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

-John Marshall, 1819

A Supreme Court ruling does not rewrite history, and it is not absolute.  Supreme Court Justices will have political leanings, and will re-interpret the Constitution to suit their needs.  Marshall, a Federalist, was one of those justices.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No, it's an insurance policy which is forbidden by the Constitution.

Uh, no. It is nothing like insurance at all.

[??????????]

Uh yes, its income insurance.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Even if one views it as insurance, SR, it is constitutional.

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Thus Congress has the power to collect taxes and use the proceeds on projects intended to improve the well-being of the United States.

Providing for the care of the elderly (whether or not that is done through an insurance-based scheme or not) is clearly one way of providing for the well-being of the United States.  You may disagree over whether it is the best way of providing for the general welfare or if the Social Security system is the best of providing for the care of the elderly, but as Marshall stated in McCulloch v. Maryland:

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In other words, the question of the best way to carry out a power of the Congress is up to Congress to decide unless the means are clearly unconstitutional.  Were it not for the 16th Amendment, one might argue that Article I Section 9 Clause 4 would have made the payroll tax used to fund Social Security unconstitutional, but the 16th amendment is part of the constitution.

[Free Palestine]

General Welfare is taken too far out of context.

"With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." -James Madison

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

General Welfare is taken too far out of context.

I agree that General Welfare isn't a general grant of power.  But it is a fairly broad clause to use the power of the purse to spend money, which happens to be exactly what Social Security does.  The founders largely expected the voters, not a scrap of parchment, to limit what Congress spent the money on.  Granted, that expectation may have been more reasonable when to be a voter, you generally had to have enough wealth that you would end up getting taxed to pay for what the Congress spent, but it was the expectation.