Opponents of this arrangement refer to this situation as the "fiscal imbalance", while others argue for the federal government's role in setting minimum standards for social programs in Canada.
Other recent examples include limitations on military funding placed on Ronald Reagan by Congress, which led to the withdrawal of United States Marines from Lebanon.
More recently, budget limitations and using the power of the purse formed a controversial part of discussion regarding Congressional opposition to the Iraq War.
Congress was not allowed to change the drinking age directly because the 21st Amendment (which ended Prohibition in the U.S.) gave control of alcohol to the states.
This power was curtailed somewhat in a case regarding the Affordable Care Act, in which the Supreme Court ruled in June 2012 that the law's withholding of all existing Medicaid funding for states that failed or refused to expand their Medicaid programs to cover the uninsured poor was "unduly coercive", despite the fact that the federal government would pay the entirety of the states' expansion for the first years, and 90% thereafter.
While typically applied to "pork barrel" spending for special interests, it may also block funding for genuine needs of a constituency or the general public.