As noted already, government (state / federal / local) doesn’t need a backdoor to control education because they already fund it directly and indirectly through myriad mechanisms.

The mistake isn’t that the federal government intends to administer federal money, the mistake is that federal money is being administered at all.

I am very far right and I see no reason that the taxpayers should be asked to guarantee student loan losses AND pay profits to administer such guarantees.

All anyone on this board needs to know is this: the federal student loan industry is an enormously profitable commercial enterprise with fatter margins than most other banking profit centers. If the federal government is dumb enough to guarantee student loans, at least they should be smart enough to cut out the middle man.

I support this initiative – and yes, I’ve got six figures in student loans.

The battle here, if anywhere, is in the mere existence of a federal program to lend money to private citizens – not exactly a traditional function of government.

anything unconstitutional with the federal government setting up an agency to administer federal funds.

If a university doesn’t wish to admit students using federal loan programs, they do not have to. They aren’t forcing them to comply with their programs in all circumstances, they are only forcing them to comply with their programs if they want to admit students who are using federal loans.

to those who pay no attention whatsoever to the corrosive effect of government upon anything it touches.

There are probably hundreds of irrefutable studies of the effect the federal loan programs have had on the cost of college educations. Nobody brings them up with politicians start talking about how great it is to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can go to college.

It wasn’t bad enough when people graduated high school without being able to think critically – now we’re headed down the road to where millions of college graduates cannot think critically.

Same deal, different story – blow the whole thing up and lets start over. We really have reached that point. Everything government touches it destroys. And by now, the government touches everything.

Thanks politicians!

but that hasn’t happened yet.

Until it does, I could also think of a million other ways the government administering its own revenue might become unconstitutional, but I doubt you’d want to hear me speculate about that.

and I suppose necessary and proper fused with a variety of the other sections would be the specific justification.

However, if the federal government wishes to raise revenue and to lend it out to students, there is plenty of precedent for its being authorized by the Constitution to do so.

But are you an attorney? Have you read a lot of SCOTUS caselaw? If not, I’m not really interested in being drawn into an argument about it with you.

Besides, I’m not arguing that it’s a good idea that the government does this. In fact, I’ve specifically suggested that the government NOT lend ANY money or guarantee any loans of any kind for any purpose, except perhaps when Congress has declared war.

All I’m saying is this: according to 200 years of precedent, no constitutional challenge to such an Act by Congress as is being discussed here would make it beyond Rule 12 in a District Court, much less all the way to the Supreme Court. So what difference does it make whether, in your mind, the Constitution doesn’t authorize such a practice?

I saw that one. Hilarious.

There is something incongruous about a man who hauls out the full panoply of Presidential stagecraft in order to awe a bunch of 12 year old kids.