Remember when President Donald Trump vowed that his brand-new White House ballroom would be built using private funds and cost the taxpayers absolutely nothing? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) is now throwing that commitment out the window and asking Congress to appropriate $400 million in public funds for the construction project.
“America has a problem, and we intend to fix it,” said Graham. “This is not about Trump. It’s about the presidency of the United States. It’s about the person who occupies that office not being put at risk if they choose to go off campus.”
Graham was referencing the attempted assassination of Trump administration officials at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. That event traditionally takes place at the Washington Hilton, where security measures successfully prevented the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, from entering the dining room. However, many conservatives are now citing the thwarted attack as a sufficient reason to build the White House ballroom and host future dinners there, where presumably security will be even tighter.
It’s true that past presidents have made significant changes to the White House; Harry Truman famously oversaw a massive renovation of the structure from 1949 to 1952. Democratic demands to preserve the East Wing—which wasn’t even part of the original building—at all costs are a bit too precious.
But it’s one thing for the president to make changes to the White House. It’s quite another to waste tons of taxpayer money on a vanity project. Yet that seems to be exactly what Graham and his co-sponsors, Sen. Katie Britt (R–Ala.) and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R–Mo.), are proposing. And they are proposing to spend this money even though donors are allegedly willing to foot the bill privately.
Congress is frequently spending money it doesn’t have. This may be the first case of lawmakers actually having the money and still preferring to spend yours.
