and the uniformity of indirect taxes, the origination of revenue bills within the House of Representatives, the disallowal of taxes on exports, the General Welfare requirement, the limitation on the release of funds from the treasury except as provided by law, and the apportionment exemption of the Sixteenth Amendment. Additionally, Congress and the legislatures of the various states are prohibited from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax by the Twenty-fourth Amendment. Origination Clause The Constitution provides in the Origination Clause that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. The idea underlying the clause is that Representatives, being the most numerous branch of Congress, and most closely associated with the people, know best the economic conditions of the people they represent, and how to generate revenues for the support of government in the least burdensome manner. Additionally, Representatives are regarded the most accountable to the people, and thus are least likely to exercise the taxing power abusively or injudiciously. General Welfare Clause Of all the limitations upon the power to tax and spend, the General Welfare Clause appears to have achieved notoriety as one of the most contentious. The dispute over the clause arises from two distinct disagreements. The first concerns whether the General Welfare Clause grants an independent spending power or is a restriction upon the taxing power. The second disagreement pertains to what exactly is meant by the phrase "general welfare." The two primary authors of The Federalist Papers set forth two separate, conflicting interpretations: James Madison advocated the ratification of the Constitution in The Federalist and at the Virginia ratifying convention upon a narrow construction of the clause, asserting that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax. Alexander Hamilton, only after the Constitution had been ratified, argued for a broad interpretation which viewed spending as an enumerated power Congress could exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture or education, provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other.