You can’t have it both ways. If the Federal government has no legitimate constitutional authority to regulate interstate highways, then states have no business holding their hands out, begging for Federal matching funds for major highway projects on the grounds that they are assets of national importance.
I am not asking to have it both ways and nothing I said implied I was.
On the other hand, there is no such as “federal” dollars and EVERY federal fuel tax dollar that federal agencies have was dragged, by taxation, from every local village, town, city, county state and region, so other than some equitable apportion of it, why should it have any other federal strings to it. It shouldn’t. Either get rid of the unnecessary strings (as well as the non-transportation expenditures from the federal “transportation ‘trust fund’ “), or qet rid of the federal fuel taxes completely and leave the money in the states.
It is only state corruption and lack of state spending priorities that creates the fiction that federal transportation funds are a “gift” from the federal government. Every dime came from legalized theft FROM THE STATES & the sole purpose of it IS federal meddling.