Just about any government has a strong tendency to take whatever has been granted to them by Constitutional law or similar, to then aggrandize onto itself, more powers than has been vested in them by its Constitution or common law to begin with. The United States Constitution as stated in Article 1, Section 8, specifically defines the powers of Congress, the legislative branch of our government, of which the function of the legislative branch is to make new laws and to change laws; however, these areas of interest, are distinctly enumerated and limited as stated in Article 1, Section 8, of our Constitution.
The reason for such limits, is that a government that has no limits, is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government that serves those in the power positions of said government, and thereby becomes the very thing that subjects the people to all sorts of oppression, interference, and invasiveness, all under the color of the Constitution, misapplied.
That is to say, the law is clearly written in the Constitution, which succinctly defines the powers vested in our Constitutional government, of which, unfortunately, those in power have consistently and repeatedly exercised powers that clearly are not vested within the legislative branch, for good reasons or not. The most significant problem with the misuse of legislative Constitutional powers is that as the government takes from the powers of the sovereignty of the individual, than the less free that given individual becomes, though, perhaps in some of those powers taken, the individual may gain in security, or other material benefits, but be that as it may, it is not Constitutional.
Those that debated and signed the Constitution which became the law of this land, executed a document for a specific purpose and for specific reasons, of which, one of those reasons, was to define and to enumerate specifically what powers our national government had or did not have over the individual, and many other assorted things fit and proper. In particular, though, the power of a government over the individual, is, and has been, the give and take of governmental law and its vested powers versus the individual, of which, any government, that legislates, executes, and judges the laws as fit and proper, must be held accountable to its limits, to its Constitution, and specifically to its enumerated powers, or it will become a force akin to a leviathan, that the people, no matter how right that they are, cannot possibly defend themselves against, and thereby the people are no longer co-equals in a government of the people, but servants to the state and its awesome and oppressive power.
The state does a great disservice when it is a power onto itself, and thereby, the only appropriate usage of Constitution power, is the recognition that such government, must operate within its Constitutional constraints as well as acknowledging in action that their just powers specifically come from the consent of the governed, which is the people. While there may be many things that one person wants or another person does not want, what one person needs and another person may not need, it is not the government's place to play favorites or to tilt the playing field, but rather it is, and always will be, the government's obligation to see that all are treated equally by the law, fairly applied, and that the people are masters of their own fate.