Oh, please. She's pointing out to you that your arguments are invalid on a financial basis, not on a constitutional basis. She's an economist and she's going to eat your lunch on this one, but if you want to try arguing that it's more fiscally responsible to not finance education, it's at least within the topic at hand.
I, on the other hand, am such a US History geek that I recently read the full text of the Treaty of Ghent and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (except the bits establishing boundaries, that's too dry even for me) and could easily compile 200 quotes from Founding Fathers discrediting the absurd notion of strict constructionism, but that's not really related to the topic.
I'll leave you this from Alexander Hamilton (underline added, caps are his):
Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.
