tax-law us-constitution debt
If our nation takes on debt now that will have to be paid by gen z later isn&#39;t that taxation without representation?
<p>We have representatives but gen z does not. How is it fair to spend their money before they are even old enough to have a say? Was the idea of pushing debt onto future generations so unthinkable that it is a constitutional blind spot?</p>

<h2>No</h2>
<p>&quot;No taxation without representation!&quot; was a slogan of the US war of independence, but it was never put into the Constitution. Indeed, the residents of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico now pay Federal income tax, but are not represented in the Congress that sets the taxes.</p>
<p>National debt has some of the same economic effects of a tax, but it is not a tax in form nor in constitutional law. Constitutional limits on tax legislation (such as the rule against unapportioned direct taxes) do not apply to congressional borrowing.</p>
<p>&quot;Representation&quot;, in the sense you mean, has never been applied to representatives of future generations, or even of people not yet of voting age.</p>
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<p>Was the idea of pushing debt onto future generations so unthinkable that it is a constitutional blind spot?</p>
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<p>Quite the reverse. Borrowing was initiated quite early, while many of the framers were still in government. In several places in the Federalist Papers, Hamilton emphasized the need for an unlimited power to tax, for, among other purposes, paying any national debts, and made it clear that such debts would be incurred, from time to time. See particularly Nos 30 and 41.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed30.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>The Federalist</em> No 30</a> Hamilton wrote:</p>
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<p>In the modern system of war, nations the most wealthy are obliged to have recourse to large loans. A country so little opulent as ours must feel this necessity in a much stronger degree. But who would lend to a government that prefaced its overtures for borrowing by an act which demonstrated that no reliance could be placed on the steadiness of its measures for paying? The loans it might be able to procure would be as limited in their extent as burdensome in their conditions.</p>
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<p>This is part of a longer argument to the effect that a lack of power by the Federal Government to levy individual taxes would be disastrous. Here Hamilton certainly seems to contemplate the Federal government borrowing in case of war or other emergency, and repaying such loans by future taxes.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed41.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>The Federalist</em> No 41</a> Madison wrote;</p>
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<p>The powers falling within the FIRST class [Security against foreign danger] are those of declaring war and granting letters of marque; of providing armies and fleets; of regulating and calling forth the militia; of levying and borrowing money. Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union. ... If a federal Constitution could chain the ambition or set bounds to the exertions of all other nations, then indeed might it prudently chain the discretion of its own government, and set bounds to the exertions for its own safety.</p>
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<p>This again seems to contemplate an unlimited power of borrowing money by the government (or limited only by its available credit) to be repaid from taxes.  Thus at least two of the founders considered this issue, and it was in now way part of a &quot;blind spot&quot;.</p>
<p>When he became the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton embarked on his famous program of encouraging manufactures, funding needed &quot;improvements&quot; (of roads and harbors, in particular) largely by borrowing. These proposals were openly, widely, and heatedly debated both in Congress and out of it, before Congress authorized them. The argument that such debts would have to be repaid out of future tax revenue was indeed advanced, although not, as far as I know, precisely in the terms this question uses. But the issue was generally considered by the public, which was in no way blind to the future effects of present borrowing by the government. It was not a later innovation, unthoguht-of by the founders and early governments of the US.</p>
<p>In short the Constitution does not contain any requirement such as the question suggests, and was never intended to do so, because the founders felt it essential to allow the government an unlimited power to borrow money, limited only by the needs of the case and the sound judgement of Congress.</p>
