On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 12:40:43 -0500, Bob LeChevalier <

But by your reasoning, the Federal government had no constitutional
right to give the money to the states, since funding state government
by land sales isn't an enumerated power.

Not by my "reasoning", but by the US Constitution itself:
Article IV, Section. 3. , Cl 2:

"The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and
Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the
United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to
Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."

Note the terms "Congress shall have Power to dispose of ...other Property
belonging to the United States".

What the states do with education appropriation money is up to them,
too, except that the Federal government will take it away if they
spend it other than as approved. Nothing forbids the government from
putting strings on its appropriations, and that is how the Feds get
around constitutional restrictions.

I agree that what the states may do with the monies received is up to them. That
the federal government is "putting strings" in such monies as your statement wrt
"nothing forbids them", is wrong on two accounts.

1. Article IV, Section. 3. , Cl 2:
"...nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any
Claims....of any particular State:

"We hold the true principle to be this...whenever, according to those laws, the
title shall have passed, then that property, like all other property in the
state, is subject to state legislation;

2. That your claim the "Feds get around constitutional restrictions", failsto
follow:

"The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form
and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for
any purpose

The USSC is the ultimate authority as to the rule of law in this
country, not your half-baked philosophy lessons.

Yet again: "The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States
confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written
constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void;

You refer to the "ultimate authority" as to the "rule of law" , yet can not cite
a case that has ruled on the question of the constitutionality of using federal
taxpayer monies to fund public education in all states.

With respect to the meaning of ''the general welfare'' the pages of
The Federalist itself disclose a sharp divergence of views between
its two principal authors. Hamilton adopted the literal, broad
meaning of the clause; 533 Madison contended that the powers of
taxation and appropriation of the proposed government should be
regarded as merely instrumental to its remaining powers, in other
words, as little more than a power of self-support. 534 From an early
date Congress has acted upon the interpretation espoused by Hamilton.
Appropriations for subsidies 535 and for an ever increasing variety
of ''internal improvements'' 536 constructed by the Federal
Government, had their beginnings in the adminis trations of
Washington and Jefferson. 537 Since 1914, federal grants- in-aid,
sums of money apportioned among the States for particular uses, often
conditioned upon the duplication of the sums by the recipient State,
and upon observance of stipulated restrictions as to its use, have
become commonplace.
The scope of the national spending power was brought before the
Supreme Court at least five times prior to 1936, but the Court
disposed of four of the suits without construing the ''general
welfare'' clause. In the Pacific Railway Cases (California v. Pacific
Railroad Co.) 538 and Smith v. Kansas City Title Co., 539 it affirmed
the power of Congress to construct internal improvements, and to
charter and purchase the capital stock of federal land banks, by
reference to the powers of the National Government over commerce, and
post roads and fiscal operations, and to its war powers. Decisions on
the merits were withheld in two other cases, Massachusetts v. Mellon
and Frothingham v. Mellon, 540 on the ground that neither a State nor
an individual citizen is entitled to a remedy in the courts against
an alleged unconstitutional appropriation of national funds. In
United States v. Gettysburg Electric Ry., 541 however, the Court had
invoked ''the great power of taxation to be exercised for the common
defence and general welfare'' 542 to sustain the right of the Federal
Government to acquire land within a State for use as a national park.

Finally, in United States v. Butler, 543 the Court gave its
unqualified endorsement to Hamilton's views on the taxing power.
Wrote Justice Roberts for the Court: ''Since the foundation of the
Nation sharp differences of opinion have persisted as to the true
interpretation of the phrase. Madison asserted it amounted to no more
than a reference to the other powers enumerated in the subsequent
clauses of the same section; that, as the United States is a
government of limited and enumerated powers, the grant of power to
tax and spend for the general national welfare must be confined to
the numerated legislative fields committed to the Congress. In this
view the phrase is mere tautology, for taxation and appropriation are
or may be necessary incidents of the exercise of any of the
enumerated legislative powers. Hamilton, on the other hand,
maintained the clause confers a power separate and distinct from
those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant of
them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to
appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be
exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States.
Each contention has had the support of those whose views are entitled
to weight. This court had noticed the question, but has never found
it necessary to decide which is the true construction. Justice Story,
in his Commentaries, espouses the Hamiltonian position. We shall not
review the writings of public men and commentators or discuss the
legislative practice. Study of all these leads us to conclude that
the reading advocated by Justice Story is the correct one. While,
therefore, the power to tax is not unlimited, its confines are set in
the clause which confers it, and not in those of Sec. 8 which bestow
and define the legislative powers of the Congress. It results that
the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for
public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative
power found in the Constitution.'' 544

Although holding that the spending power is not limited by the
specific grants of power contained in Article I, Sec. 8, the Court
found, nevertheless, that it was qualified by the Tenth Amendment,
and on this ground ruled in the Butler case that Congress could not
use moneys raised by taxation to ''purchase compliance'' with
regulations ''of matters of State concern with respect to which
Congress has no authority to interfere.'' 545 Within little more than
a year this decision was reduced to narrow proportions by Steward
Machine Co. v. Davis, 546 which sustained the tax imposed on
employers to provide unemployment benefits, and the credit allowed
for similar taxes paid to a State. To the argument that the tax and
credit in combination were ''weapons of coercion, destroying or
impairing the autonomy of the States,'' the Court replied that relief
of unemployment was a legitimate object of federal expenditure under
the ''general welfare'' clause, that the Social Security Act
represented a legitimate attempt to solve the problem by the
cooperation of State and Federal Governments, that the credit allowed
for state taxes bore a reasonable relation ''to the fiscal need
subserved by the tax in its normal operation,'' 547 since state
unemployment compensation payments would relieve the burden for
direct relief borne by the national treasury. The Court reserved
judgment as to the validity of a tax ''if it is laid upon the
condition that a State may escape its operation through the adoption
of a statute unrelated in subject matter to activities fairly within
the scope of national policy and power.'' 548

...
An Unrestrained Federal Spending Power .--Little if any
constitutional controversy marks the debate over the modern exercise
of the spending power. There are, of course, ''general
restrictions,'' the first of which is that the power must be used in
pursuit of the general welfare. 549 However, great deference is
judicially accorded Congress' decision that a spending program
advances the general welfare, 550 and the Court has suggested that
the question whether a spending program provides for the general
welfare may not even be judicially noticeable. 551 Dispute, such as
it is, turns on the conditioning of funds.

''Congress has frequently employed the Spending Power to further broad
policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal moneys upon
compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative
directives. This Court has repeatedly upheld against constitutional
challenge the use of this technique to induce governments and private
parties to cooperate voluntarily with federal policy.'' 555 Standards
purporting to channel Congress' discretion have been announced by the
Court, but they amount to little more than hortatory admonitions. 556
First, the conditions, like the spending itself, must advance the
general welfare, but the decision of that rests largely if not wholly
with Congress. 557 Second, since the States may choose to receive or
not receive the proffered funds, Congress must set out the conditions
unambiguously, so that the States may rationally decide. 558 Third,
it is suggested in the cases that the conditions must be related to
the federal interest for which the funds are expended, 559 but,
though it continues to repeat this standard, it has never found a
spending condition that did not survive scrutiny under this part of
the test. 560 Fourth, the power to condition funds may not be used to
induce the States to engage in activities that would themselves be
unconstitutional. 561 Fifth, the Court has suggested that in some
circumstances the financial inducement offered by Congress might be
so coercive as to pass the point at which ''pressure turns into
compulsion,'' 562 but again the Court has never found a congressional
condition to be coercive in this sense. 563 Certain federalism
restraints on other federal powers seem not to be relevant to
spending conditions. 564

That you can not show an enumerated power within the US Constitution that
authorizes Congress to use federal taxpayer monies to fund public education in
all states is not a "half-baked philosophy lesson",