[COLUMN] Federal aid to Haiti illegal

By now, most of us have seen the devastation in Haiti. Sometimes, living in the modern world, with the technology to beam images of death and destruction in high-definition color right to our handheld devices, televisions and computer screens, is a curse.

However, as the latest natural disaster has proved, that curse is a two-edged sword. The very technology that is delivering pictures of the bodies in the streets and collapsed school buildings is also giving Americans the opportunity to assist those in the disaster area very quickly.

It is now possible to donate by sending a text message from a cellular phone. For example, to donate $10 to the Red Cross, just text the message "Haiti" to the number 90999.

Done.

What this shows is that Americans, as a whole, are a generous lot. Citizens have already donated millions of dollars to the relief effort.

That is how it is supposed to work.

Unfortunately, our politicians love to be generous with money that does not belong to them. President Barack Obama is no exception. He has pledged to give the stricken country at least $100 million.

However, he lacks the legal authority to do so.

I have thumbed through my well-worn copy of the U.S. Constitution (OK, it is no longer so well-worn as I have retired my pocket Constitution in favor of an electronic one on my Palm Pre) and I have been unable to place my finger on the exact section and paragraph that says the federal government can give money from the public treasury for acts of benevolence or philanthropy.

That is because it does not exist.

The U.S. Constitution is a limiting document operating under the Enumerated Powers Doctrine. Simply put, that means the federal government has no power that is not specifically listed in the Constitution. It is not a living document that changes with the times. It means what it says.

James Madison, as the father of the Constitution (a moniker he rejected), should know. As a congressman, he argued against aid for French refugees (from the Haitian Revolution of all places) and said he could not "undertake to lay [his] finger on that article of the federal Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

President S. Grover Cleveland, perhaps one of our last presidents who actually understood the Constitution, knew that when, in 1887, he vetoed a bill appropriating $10,000 in federal aid to buy seeds for Texas farmers suffering from drought because he could "find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution."

Of course, our government stopped acting lawfully decades ago so say goodbye to hundreds of millions of tax dollars that we don't even have.

I was slightly amused, however, when Obama, while pledging to give away other people's money, told the Haitians to be patient and that it could be several days before the aid arrived because "roads are impassable, the main port is badly damaged and communication is just coming on line."

Sound familiar?

Of course, when the federal government was faced with the exact same problem in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (along with violence against aid providers), President George W. Bush was pilloried by the liberal media.

What Hurricane Katrina reminded us then and Haiti reiterates now is that despite all our technology, sometimes we still have no way of easily bypassing the obstacles that appear during natural disasters.

Ultimately, though, the real lesson of Haiti is more philosophical. It is a reminder of the frailty of the human condition despite the indomitability of our spirit.

There is not a place on this planet safe from some sort of natural disaster, whether it be the routine ones such as earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis, or the rarer but potentially more damaging ones such as an asteroid hit or the eruption of one of the seven known super volcanoes (such as the one at Yellowstone National Park, which scientists say is overdue for an eruption).

The Haiti earthquake should serve as a reminder to us all to enjoy every moment to its fullest for we never know if it will be our last.