Madison’s Veto And Monroe’s Pivot

What if the road to American nation-building ran straight through a constitutional crossroads? We dig into James Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill and James Monroe’s later twist on internal improvements to reveal how early presidents sketched the limits—and possibilities—of federal power. The stakes were not just roads and canals, but the meaning of the Spending Clause, the reach of the Commerce Clause, and whether “general welfare” is a guiding aim or a blank check.

We start with Madison, who reversed himself on the Bank of the United States after the War of 1812 but drew a hard line on infrastructure. He argued that internal improvements weren’t in Article I, Section 8 and couldn’t be justified by commerce or a free-standing general welfare power. The fix, in his view, was simple and honest: pass a constitutional amendment. Anything else would blur the separation between national and state spheres and silence the courts’ ability to police the boundary.

Then we follow Monroe, who began as Jefferson’s strict heir but offered a new path: Congress could tax and spend broadly for the general welfare, yet it couldn’t directly operate roads or impose toll regimes without distinct constitutional authority. This solution—the check without the control—helped fuel national development while preserving a role for states. Not everyone cheered. Henry Clay wanted internal improvements tethered to commerce and defense, not to an open-ended spending power that might, over time, wash out federalism.

Across the conversation, we connect these 1810s choices to long arcs: Jackson’s partial return to Madison’s caution, nineteenth‑century workarounds like federal land grants, and the twentieth‑century settlement during the New Deal, when Congress’s spending power grew and the Supreme Court largely aligned with Monroe’s vision. Today’s highways, grants-in-aid, and policy “strings” still carry their fingerprints. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to tell us: whose constitutional map do you trust when building the next big public project?

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Madison’s Veto
• 2:36 Federal Power Versus States
• 4:26 Madison Reconsiders The Bank
• 6:26 Why The Bonus Bill Was Vetoed
• 9:26 Spending Power And General Welfare
• 12:16 Does The System Work
• 14:56 Monroe’s Opening Stance

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Madison’s Veto

SPEAKER_01 0:46

All right, welcome back to Civics in a year. Today we have Dr. Beidenberg with us, and today we're talking about James Madison, the veto of the bonus bill in 1817, and then James Monroe on internal improvements. So, Dr. Beidenberg, what is happening when these are written, and what problems are we trying to address with the East?

Federal Power Versus States

Madison Reconsiders The Bank

Why The Bonus Bill Was Vetoed

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Right. So these, in some sense, might be more obscure or less known text than some of the others. And I requested them beyond here because I think they're very constitutionally important. And particularly they set up a lot of the debates we'll see in the 1830s. So obviously, the bait the main debate in some ways in US constitutionalism has been on the exact contours of federal power, federalism versus state power, right? And so, in some sense, this is another replay of the debates that Madison had been having with Hamilton. But it's important because it shows places where you're starting to see, in some sense, something moving toward a consensus. And in some places, these fissures remain live. So the James Madison, it should be remembered, is president. And my colleague Aaron Kushner always likes saying he fails the one job of a president, which is not getting the White House burned down. But I don't think that's quite fair. But but one of the things that's striking is Madison is president, and Jefferson as well, when he is president, have to sort of think through did they get it right in their older debates with Hamilton, basically about the bank and about sort of tariffs and subsidies. And Madison very prominently, during the War of 1812, says, I was wrong on the bank. I think the bank is constitutional. It is an empirical matter, because he said it actually looks like it is in fact a necessary and proper for us to be able to do, and he lists off the enumerated powers, because he said when we didn't have a bank, it couldn't, like we couldn't generate the funds to do X, Y, and Z, right? So he says, I was wrong on that. Is it even using my own framework of necessary and proper, like it actually has been proven to be necessary and proper. So I think this is constitutional. And so some people take that to be Madison saying, all right, sort of, I'm on board with just with a stronger across the board Hamiltonian view of constitutionalism. And particularly Henry Clay and John Calhoun are very interested in infrastructure spending. Calhoun at this point, and we'll talk more about this when we do nullification in a few podcasts. Calhoun is actually one of the most sort of pro-central federal power people in Washington. It's through the 1820s. And so they basically want to create this big omnibus federal spending bill channeling money to internal improvements. And basically on his way out the door, Madison vetoes this. And Madison vetoes this, and he lays out the case for particularly what he thinks the spending power of the Constitution, how it should be interpreted. And he says, look, I think improvements are good. I'm not against this on the policy merits. Like we need to we need to fund some infrastructure. But he says, I'll quote him here in a few places. The legislative powers are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the, you know, the first article of the Constitution. It doesn't look like it's in here. There is no enumerated power. So then he says, is there any just interpretation to make these laws necessary property? He says, no, you're going to point to people will point to the commerce clause, but he he understands the commerce clause to be just too divided, like it's about regulating commerce. It's not about building infrastructure. He just thinks that is qualitatively, quantitatively sufficiently detached from commerce that it needs its own power. And so he says, throw on an amendment, that's fine. This is great on the merits, but like in good faith, I think this is a stretch of the powers. Some of you think differently, but I think this is a stretch. And he goes on to say a couple of things. So connecting back to earlier, he says, look, I've been saying forever that the taxing and spending power has to be attached to an enumerated power. General welfare is not a freestanding power. So he's consistent. He says, I said that in Federals 41, I said that in the bank debates. I continue to insist on this. One of the things that he points out, and this is partly why I think this document is so important for later today. I guess this is jumping ahead to where we usually talk about this stuff, but Madison says if you allow the federal government to tax and spend for whatever it wants, this leaves no role, he says, for the judicial authority to participate in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the general and the state governments. If general welfare is its own freestanding power, then Congress can basically just shovel money to whatever, and this will sweep away federalism. And so he says, again, again, he does he doesn't explicitly go through the whole bank thing, but every every listener is going to know. He's effectively saying, all right, the bank clearly is a power that seems like it's sufficiently connected. Infrastructure isn't. Maybe it should be, so let's do an constitutional amendment. So that's the backstory there. And then Monroe, I'll pause here, but Monroe effectively is then dealing with an attempt to redo what they had just gotten vetoed. So Calhoun basically more or less collects a bunch of other things and tries to get Monroe to pass it, to sign it in a few years. So that's the backstory here is this debate about does the federal spending authority uh authorize infrastructure? And it's the same debate we've been seeing for a long time. And it's the same debate we continue to see today in some places.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So the founding father is like, I mean, the constitution's written, they're trying to like figure these things out. How does this like these ideas and these tensions tell us something important about how you know constitutional democracy was working during this time?

Spending Power And General Welfare

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Right. I actually take, in some sense, in many ways, I guess I say I always say I take a heretical take on this. I actually think that this debate shows that the system is working. And it also shows that I think there's narrower or there's more consensus than people think, right? So, and we'll talk more about this when we talk about like Andrew Jackson in a little bit, but the really debate is quite narrow. I mean, the his historians like to call this the era of good feelings, and there's only one party. Uh and in some sense, then if you actually look at the sort of under the feelings are not so good. It's very, very high personal animosity, which but the constitutional debate really is quite narrow. They all agree that constitutionally this is supposed to be a government where the federal government has few powers, the states do most things. The disagreement really is over three issues. Does the federal government have authority to run a bank from the commerce power and the basically taxing and spending, implementing the taxing and spending powers? Does the federal government have authority to fund infrastructure? And then this is even less of a constitutional one, really, for most people. Can the tariff power be used basically for economic protection rather than revenue generation? And that's really it. I mean, I I think that's you know, it's easy to lose to like overblow that up because it matters. It matters to people whether you can have a bank or not. You know, it matters, but they still basically are fighting within the forward, like even the 45-yard lines, I would say. And so to me, the fact that Madison is issuing a veto that's very thoughtful, talking about civic education, talking about nuanced issues of federalism, like I think that actually shows constitutional democracy working. Like we don't have this kind of discourse anymore where we're expecting thoughtful constitutional analysis. And this will this will come back again with Jackson. This will come like whether you think they're right or they're wrong on any of these cases, they're thoughtful, they're thoughtful uh in ways that uh I don't think that we expect now. And there's a there's a dial, there is a dialogue about it. And you know, Monroe views himself as basically Jefferson's protege. Uh in fact, he's generally thought to be stricter. So he comes into office and says, basically, his person is sort of inaugural or first annual message to Congress is yeah, I saw that thing that Madison just did. Rock on. Like we we are we are not doing this kind of exclusive interpretation of the Constitution, you know, sub-tweet, we're not Alexander Hamilton, we're still Jefferson's people. And then a few years later, Calhoun basically pushes through a piece of infrastructure spending to build a road, the Cumberland Road, and Monroe vetoes it. And if you read his message, part of it sounds very much like Madison, like Madison on this. And he says, look, there's no federal power for us to run infrastructure. But under the hood, he says, However, I have become convinced that the federal government can tax and spend for whatever it wants. It just can't then regulate how to run the toll roads. So he basically says that it's unconstitutional for this little marginal part of it. But if you're Calhoun, you realize you've won because you have now convinced the great leader of the and the strictest from, you know, not the strictest, but someone who had been heretofore seen as a strict person on that, now is basically adopting what will become the vision of the sort of the national, the American system. Now, ironically, and again, we have this narrative that Henry Clay is the big government wing and the National Republicans and the Whigs. Clay is actually pissed at Monroe's message because he thinks Monroe is expanding federal power too much. Even though he gets what he wants with the infrastructure, Clay very much wants to say, no, the infrastructure spending is allowed because it is attached to the commerce power. It is attached to us being able to move troops. It is attached to these things. Once we have made spending its own freestanding power, this will sweep away federalism. So there's this really getting this really sort of, I think, cool debate, cool thing that's happening where members of Congress are seriously debating constitutional issues. And even when they get what they want, like Clay is mad that he's reasoning it for the wrong ways in ways that will be long-term destructive to the constitutional balance between between the federal government uh and the states.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

So why do these documents still matter?

Does The System Work

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I mean, this document still matters in so far, these documents still matter insofar as they set up, they they anticipate one of the major debates that we still continue to see the implications of, which is that eventually we we from the founding we had this debate between Madison and Hamilton. Can the federal government spend for anything or only for the enumerated powers? And spending is something that the courts can't interfere with, and so that they don't they don't take a side on this until the 30s. After basically after Hamilton or after Monroe here, Jackson comes back and he sort of reverts back. Jackson comes in and reverts more or less to the Madisonian position, which holds with some nuance. They basically get around it by just giving federal land away rather than direct spending, is a way to sort of punt on this question. But almost everything that the federal government does today either comes from the commerce power, which we've talked about repeatedly in podcasts, or the federal government incentivizing spending to the states and saying, we will give you a little bit of money. So that's basically what Monroe ends up advocating for in the memo there, saying Congress can give money to the states, and the states can spend on whatever they want. Madison and Monroe both agree that the states can't just say, federal government, you can overstep your bounds if we consent. No, you still need a constitutional amendment if there's actually a violation. They agree on that. But Monroe is saying, yes, basically, Congress can incentivize states to do things or spend beyond the enumerated powers. And that has massive, massive implications for what the scope of the federal government is. And eventually in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt, as we've talked about, takes on after being critical of, he takes on effectively the Monroe position here. And then the Supreme Court shortly agrees. So these documents are, again, uh, they they have they're really thoughtful. Again, I think Madison more so than Monroe, but they are very thoughtful explanations of what the spending power of different ways to interpret the spending power and what the implications for that on our constitutional order will be. So they're obscure, but they're super important. And they will continue to come back up.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Awesome. Dr. Beyenberg, thank you.