Ron Paul Wants To End All Federal Student Aid

Ron Paul claims there is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to provide monetary assistance to college students.  If elected president, Paul says he'll stop all aid.

Of course, as any high schooler can tell you, the Constitution allows for Congress to spend money almost any way it wants in order to meet the objectives of government.

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

If it wanted to pay for all college tuition in the whole country, it could.  There's nothing illegal about it.  What Congress can't do is authorize money to be spent to violate someone's Constitutional rights.  Such as, Congress cannot authorize money to be spent on keeping women from voting.  Or authorize money to keep people over the age of 25 from running for federal office.  Those are rights guaranteed in the Constitution and Congress cannot hamper them.

This is yet another pesky argument by Ron Paul, and many of his supporters, that unless it's directly mentioned in the Constitution it's illegal.  It's a way of applying the Constitution very narrowly to meet their ideology.  For instance, the Constitution says nothing about owning an automatic weapon.  It merely says the right to bare arms and there's no way the Founders meant automatic machine guns.  But that's when Ron Paul wants the Constitution applied very broadly cause it's something he believes in.  Therefore, even though it was never the intention of the Founders for people to own bazookas, nor is it specifically mentioned in the Constitution, it doesn't matter to Paul.