"Since the New Deal, Americans have slowly forgotten that the Constitution puts great limits on what the federal government can do. As recently as the 1950s, people could still question whether the federal government ought to build a national highway system. In order to justify that program constitutionally, it was called the National Defense Highway Act. Today, of course, any notion that such a program would need that sort of constitutional veneer to gain passage is absurd. Bush can help himself and his tax and budgetary plans by trying to reinvigorate constitutionality as a rationale his actions. Programs that do not rest on a clear grant of constitutional power should be abolished or transferred to the states. He can even argue that tax rates that are too high violate the Constitution's prohibition against unlawful seizure."