Article 1, The Legislative Branch. Section 8, Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay
the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States
but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States, to
borrow money on the credit of the United States, to regulate commerce with foreign nations
and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes, to establish an uniform rule
of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United
States, to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and a foreign coin, and fix the standards
of weights and measures, to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities
and current coin of the United States, to establish post offices and post roads, to
promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors
and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries, to constitute
tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court, to define and punish piracies and felonies committed
on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, to declare war, grant records
of mark and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water, to raise and support
armies, but no appropriation of money to the future be for a longer term than two years
to provide and maintain a navy, to make rules for the government and regulation of the land
and naval forces, to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union
suppress insurrections and repel invasions, to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining
the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of
the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the appointment of the officers
and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by
Congress, to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district
not exceeding ten miles, square, as may, by special and particular States, and the acceptance
of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like
authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the State in
which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards
and other needful buildings, and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution
in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof, to be