> In other words, the federal government is an unconstitutional middleman for such funding.
I would love it if that argument would hold up in court, but I’m pretty sure it has been rejected soundly and repeatedly. If it hadn’t, we could undo 90% of federal activities by filing suit on this principle.
With all due respect, I don’t see you also referencing the Constitution and Supreme Court case opinions.
As far as today’s very corrupt, post-FDR era courts are concerned, the Constitution was ratified when FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring justices wrongly decided Wickard v. Filburn in 1942 in Congress’s favor imo, not in 1788.
"The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” —Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819.
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." —Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823."
Consider, as a consequence of growing up with a very corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification, post-FDR federal government, everybody thinks that everything the feds do is constitutional.