The Supreme Court does seem to reign in that technicality (as you put it). For instance, there were some provisions of Obamacare tied to funding that that the SC voted were invalid.

But in general, you're correct. Incidentally, this change is actually Constitutionally-valid in some sense, in that a Constitutional amendment needed to be passed (income tax) in order to give the Federal gov't the money to bully the states in the first place.