158
Opinion of the Court
Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Interstate commerce was an established feature of life in the late 18th century. See, e. g., The Federalist No. 42, p. 267 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) ("The defect of power in the existing Confederacy to regulate the commerce between its several members [has] been clearly pointed out by experience"). The volume of interstate commerce and the range of commonly accepted objects of government regulation have, however, expanded considerably in the last 200 years, and the regulatory authority of Congress has expanded along with them. As interstate commerce has become ubiquitous, activities once considered purely local have come to have effects on the national economy, and have accordingly come within the scope of Congress' commerce power. See, e. g., Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294 (1964); Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942).
Second, the Constitution authorizes Congress "to pay the Debts and provide for the . . . general Welfare of the United States." Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. As conventional notions of the proper objects of government spending have changed over the years, so has the ability of Congress to "fix the terms on which it shall disburse federal money to the States." Penn-hurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17 (1981). Compare, e. g., United States v. Butler, supra, at 72-75 (spending power does not authorize Congress to subsidize farmers), with South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U. S. 203 (1987) (spending power permits Congress to condition highway funds on States' adoption of minimum drinking age). While the spending power is "subject to several general restrictions articulated in our cases," id., at 207, these restrictions have not been so severe as to prevent the regulatory authority of Congress from generally keeping up with the growth of the federal budget.
The Court's broad construction of Congress' power under the Commerce and Spending Clauses has of course been guided, as it has with respect to Congress' power generally, by the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause, which
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