It has been interpreted to be very open, but that has only been very recently. The dispute as to whether it covers everything or just the enumerated powers subsequently listed has been in dispute from before the constitution was approved.
We have for the most part taken your view which has assigned enormous power to the federal government to interfere in our lives. Let's face it. If you take a very broad view, the federal government can do practically anything it wants. It has seized for itself this enormous power over states and our personal lives because of it, limiting our freedoms. That's unfortunate. I don't think the intent was that broad.
As you know, the ability to tax income was added by Amendment. Sure there were excise taxes in the original document. But without the ability to tax income granted by Amendment, the government had little it could spend on after the costs of an army and the other enumerated expenses it had to care for. So I don't think the original intent was for the government to bail out corporations and unions and spend money or credits for oil or solar. This is one of the reasons the government and the public are broke. Because the Federal government has seized power under the acquiescence of the cowardly and liberal Supreme Court and spent itself to death.
You seem to be discussing both the specific article, section, and clause of the Constitution which gives Congress the broad power to decide matters of spending and a broader discussion to include powers to tax, as well as interpretation of the framer's intent for the Constitution more broadly. Given my preference for discussions that are focused and don't unnecessarily wander too far afield, I'll discuss the latter only briefly as it relates to the broadness and specificity of the language used in the Constitution.
First, the reason that multiple Supreme Courts across multiple decades have upheld that the Constitution gives Congress very broad spending power with few limits is due to the language the framers used. I've repeated it multiple times and won't do so again. Anyone can argue anything, but the foundations for arguments are not all equally strong. The foundation for the argument that "general welfare" actually means that it applies only to other specifically enumerated powers is weak because it assumes that it's what the framers intended, but that they simply failed to say so specifically and inadvertently chose vague language. The reason that multiple Supreme Courts have rejected that argument is because the argument that the framers in writing the Constitution chose words and expressed intent carefully and as clearly as language permits is very strong based on knowledge of those that wrote it. It follows then that the use of the specific word "general" in reference to spending means
general and does not mean the opposite; that it is intended to mean
specifically limited by other powers. The view of multiple Supreme Courts has been that if the framers intended the
general spending power to be limited to the other specifically enumerated powers they were capable of saying so, but chose not to do so for a reason. I mentioned the reason earlier.
As to the taxing power, it wanders from the discussion of spending power, so I'll take a pass on discussing it in any detail. I'll just mention briefly that the first direct federal tax on income came at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and ended in 1872. The history of the Sixteenth Amendment is another kettle of fish that I need not get into in this discussion.
Finally, regarding various Constitutional interpretations of federal powers and the language and intent of the framers in writing it, there is obviously no universally accepted view. Debate over these things indeed started from the moment it was signed and will continue as long as it remains the governing document. My view is that those who take the extreme black and white positions of interpretation are on shaky ground. The language used by the framers in the Constitution is very specific in parts of the document and broad in others. So, the argument that the entire document was intended to be interpreted broadly enough to give the federal government nearly unlimited power is as weak as the argument that the entire document was intended to be interpreted so specifically that the federal government has only a very narrow range of power. Those extreme views ignore the facts that the framers were extremely well educated and skilled in the use of language and that they used that language in
both broad and specific ways in crafting the language of the Constitution. It is because of the use of both broad and specific language that the extreme views have such a weak foundation for their arguments. The reality is that rational arguments applied to the Constitution fall within a broad continuum between those extremes and will no doubt continue unabated regarding just how broad the broadly worded powers are and how narrow the specifically worded powers.
