This is like saying I read the first sentence of the wikipedia article and it doesn't mention something so it must not exist.
Congress authorized it in 1950; it's extremely visible. [1]
> The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is authorized and governed by the "National Science Foundation Act of 1950," as amended, as well as other statutes authorizing NSF activities and making appropriations to the agency.
The Tenth Amendment clearly states, ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ If the Constitution does not grant a power to the Congress, it does not have it and it has no more legislative authority in that regard than you or I do.
Article I, Section 8 says:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
That’s not Sovereign Citizen nonsense — it’s very basic constitutional law. Congress doesn’t have the ability to pass national rent control, for example.
Rent control should be easy to fit within "general welfare".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Price_Control_Act_of...
It's a reading of constitutional law that insists that the only thing that matters is what they can shallowly read in their pocket constitution, while totally ignoring most of the constitution itself and any of the surrounding court precedent. :)
Eadmund incorrectly notes "The Congress only has the powers granted in Article I and further amendments", and cites the tenth amendment while asking "What’s the Constitutional basis for that law?"
Duh, the appointments clause in conjunction with the necessary and proper clause. :3
> Article I bestows on Congress certain specified, or enumerated, powers. The Court has recognized that these powers are supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause, which provides Congress with "broad power to enact laws that are ‘convenient, or useful’ or ‘conducive’ to [the] beneficial exercise" of its more specific authorities. The Supreme Court has observed that the Necessary and Proper Clause authorizes Congress to establish federal offices. Congress accordingly enjoys broad authority to create government offices to carry out various statutory functions and directives. The legislature may establish government offices not expressly mentioned in the Constitution in order to carry out its enumerated powers.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...
Section 7 [2] lets them write laws as well as Section 8 [4] . Section 8 aslo lets them pay for it [3].
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-c...
[2]: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...
[3]: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...
[4]: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...
Of course it does. It has no power to regulate rents outside of federal territories, which is what I wrote. It cannot pass national rent control, for example.
> Section 7 lets them write laws as well as Section 8
Section 7 describes how bills are passed; Section 8 describes what those bills may do. Congress has no Constitutional power to require that every home in the United States have yellow shutters. I feel like this should be uncontroversial! I’m genuinely surprised anyone thinks otherwise.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
The Constitution is a collection of statements and they collectively have implications. All of Euclidean geometry is based off of 5 statements. That the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say you can have a Department of the Air Force does not imply having one is unconstitutional.
Many Christians believe in the holy trinity despite that phrase appearing nowhere in the Bible.
I think the news is less that a branch of the executive is complying with executive branch policy, and more that it’s surprising how much of the federal government’s actions are based not in the law and the Constitution, but rather in policy. One man almost sixty years ago creates a policy with a stroke of a pen, and it effectively becomes law; another now removes it with a stroke of a different pen. If the latter is a problem, surely the former was too; if the former was not a problem, then why is the latter?
Speaking of the Constitution, what is the Constitutional basis for this large structure of federal funding for the sciences? Nothing in Article I, Section 8 appears to cover it: the encouragement of science appears to be limited to copyright and patent monopolies.