The problem isn’t the commerce clause, it’s the necessary and proper clause. It originally meant that anything Congress did had to be essential to an enumerated power. For example, the first National Bank was largely declared unconstitutional because while it was helpful to regulate the value of money, it was not actually essential to doing so.

Unfortunately, that got weakened to the point where the Supreme Court will allow anything that is even tangentially related to one of the enumerated powers (usually probably including “general welfare”) to be considered “necessary and proper”.

The commerce clause wouldn’t be so bad if the Court hadn’t given Congress the ability to regulate anything even remotely affecting interstate commerce, regardless of whether it’s “necessary and proper”.

The problem, of course, is that the expansive reading of the Commerce Clause of Art. I, Sec. 8, allows Congress to do just about anything.

- Josh