Hefty Price Tag
Republicans insisted that the money would pay for new White House security measures, not construction of the president's ballroom project
Senate Republicans have proposed setting aside $1 billion this year in taxpayer funding for security upgrades to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project. The push for legislation to secure the ballroom arrives after a man was charged with attempting to assassinate the president at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last week.
The legislation states that the money would be used “for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.”
The addition of $1 billion for Secret Service funds is part of a nearly $72 billion package aimed at funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through 2029.
Trump has previously told Americans that the ballroom’s construction would cost $400 million and be “free of charge,” emphasizing that it would be funded by private donors. “I’m paying for it; the country’s not,” the president said in September, per CNN. In October, Trump said that that the ballroom would be paid for “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.”
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A spokeswoman for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted that the “bill does not fund ballroom construction.” In a statement to The Washington Post, spokeswoman Clare Slattery said that it “provides funds for Secret Service enhancements that will ensure all presidents, their families and their staffs are adequately protected.”
Trump has authorized a series of construction projects and rebrands of major D.C. federal structures without authorization, fund appropriations, or oversight from Congress and the respective historical and preservation bodies including the demolition of the White House Rose Garden; the co-opting of the Kennedy Center; the gold leaf takeover in the West Wing; and the destruction of a whole wing of the White House to build himself a massive ballroom.