Just over a year after President Donald Trump promised the US was entering a “golden age,” Americans are expressing unprecedented pessimism about the state of the economy.
Gallup on Tuesday released a poll showing that 55% of Americans say their personal finances are getting worse, which is a record high over the last 25 years of data.
For comparison, 49% of Americans said their finances were getting worse at the outset of the Great Recession in 2008, while 50% reported their finances were getting worse at both the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and at the height of the post-pandemic inflation crisis in 2023.
“Affordability continues to be the main financial challenge for US households, with concerns about various costs far outpacing all other financial worries,” Gallup wrote. “Combined with the lingering effects of sustained inflation during and after the pandemic, Americans’ financial perceptions and outlook remain cautious.”
The poll was conducted between April 1 and April 15, and the financial pressures facing Americans have only grown in the two weeks since.
The price of Brent crude oil futures, which stood at $95 per barrel on April 15, has since spiked upward to more than $111 per barrel. Likewise, the average price of gas in the last week has grown from $4.02 per gallon to $4.17 per gallon, according to data collected by AAA.
The cost of oil surged starting in March after President Donald Trump launched an illegal war of choice with Iran, which responded by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial shipping.
The war has also led to shortages of fertilizer during planting season, which has led some experts to warn of a global food crisis unless the strait opens in the very near future. The prospective food crisis could be further exacerbated by what scientists are projecting will be a “super El Niño,” a global climate phenomenon that would result in lower than average rainfall.
Taxpayers buying $400 million White House ballroom won’t help
At the same time, a group of Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on Tuesday pushed for US taxpayers to foot the bill for Trump’s planned $400 million luxury ballroom.
Hours after Graham unveiled his plan to fund the ballroom with taxpayer money, Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) appeared on Fox Business to bang the drum on building the ballroom.
“You would think this town would be tired of Donald Trump being right all the time,” Moore said in response to critics of the project. “This president has always had the ability to see around corners and make decisions that are best for the country or his business. We need to have that ballroom built. God bless the president for doing it.”
Sarah Longwell, a former Republican pollster who left the party over her disgust with Trump, pointed to polling averages aggregated by data analyst Nate Silver showing that nearly 69% of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the cost of living, and suggested the push for the ballroom was wildly out of touch with Americans’ concerns.
“You know what’ll turn these numbers around? A taxpayer-funded ballroom,” she wrote sarcastically.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) held a press conference late Monday to announce their intention to expedite a bill to the Senate floor to use public funds to pay for the construction of a secure ballroom, joining Trump in insisting that a shooting at the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday proved the project is a national security priority.
Trump has demanded the construction of the ballroom for months, ordering demolition work to begin last year as he insisted the project would be paid for entirely by private donations from companies with government contracts like Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Google – a plan that has raised alarm over significant conflicts of interest.
The construction was halted recently after a federal court ruled the project must be approved by Congress, but an appeals court this month allowed the building to continue while it reviews the ruling.
On Monday evening, the US Department of Justice also filed a motion – which observers noted appeared to be written in the same style the president frequently uses in his social media posts – demanding that US District Judge Richard Leon dissolve his previous injunction blocking the project.
The motion started by claiming the name of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the nonprofit that sued over the ballroom construction, is “FAKE.”
“They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly referred to as TDS,” reads the filing.
Graham said Monday that the ballroom should be paid for with $400 million in taxpayer funds collected in the form of national park fees and customs fees, with the private funding Trump secured going to extra costs like fine china.
The senator insisted the American public, whose approval of the president stood at 40% in one monthly survey in March, would support the bill.
“If you don’t think $400 million of taxpayer money is a good investment to create a secure facility at the White House, then I disagree. I bet you 90% of Americans would love to have a better facility,” said Graham.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal responded: “Nope. Ninety percent of Americans would love to have affordable healthcare, housing, and childcare. Or lower gas prices. Or lower grocery prices. Not a frigging illegally constructed ballroom.”
Graham explained that beneath the ballroom there would be “a lot of military stuff” and “infrastructure that is national security-centric,” and suggested the construction of the facility would allow Trump and future presidents to stay on the White House grounds instead of leaving for public events.
The WHCA has held its annual dinner at the Washington Hilton for decades, and it’s unclear whether it would ever change the venue to the White House in order to hold the event in a “secure” ballroom.
The press conference came two days after a man armed with multiple guns and knives tried to break into the WHCA dinner and exchanged gunfire with Secret Service personnel before being tackled and disarmed. Just hours after being evacuated from the chaotic scene, Trump held a press conference with his top administration officials and declared the incident had proven that “we need the ballroom.”