The Supreme Court Has Long Distinguished the Taxing Power from the Regulatory Power  Paul Moreno, professor of history at Hillsdale College,  details the history on the Wall Street Journal opinion page:  The first enumerated power that the Constitution grants to Congress is the “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.” The text indicates that the taxing power is not plenary, but can be used only for defined ends and objects—since a comma, not a semicolon, separated the clauses on means…